*f      .  -e 


TUB  PILGRIM'S  VISION. 


THE 


INNOCENTS  ABROAD, 


OR 


THE  NEW  PILGRIMS'  PROGRESS; 

BEING  SOME   ACCOUNT   OF    THE    STEAMSHIP    QUAKER    CITY'S   PLEASURE 

EXCURSION    TO    EUROPE    AND    THE    HOLY    LAND;    WITH 

DESCRIPTIONS    OF    COUNTRIES,    NATIONS, 

INCIDENTS  AND  ADVENTURES, 

AS  THEY  APPEARED. 

TO  THE 

AUTHOR. 

WITH  TWO  HUNDRED  AND  THIRTY-FOUR  ILLUSTRATIONS, 


BY 

MARK    TWAIN, 

(SAMtlEL     L.      CLEMENS.) 


(ISSUED   BY   SUBSCRIPTION   ONLY,    AND   NOT   FOR   SALE   IN   THE   BOOK-STORES.      RESIDENTS   OF   ANY  STATE   DESIRING 
A   COPY   SHOULD    ADDRESS  THE    PUBLISHERS,    AND   AN   AGENT  WILL   CALL   UPON  THEM.) 


HARTFORD,    CONK.: 
AMERICAN  PUBLISHING   COMPANY. 

BLISS  &  CO.,  NEWARK,  N.  J. ;    R.  W.  BLISS  &  CO.,  TOLEDO.  OHIO. 

F.  G.   OILMAN   &   CO.,    CHICAGO,    ILL.;    NETTLETON    &   CO.,    CINCINNATI,    OHIO. 

F.  A.  HUTCHINSON  &  CO.,  ST.  LOUIS,  MO. 

H.   IL    BANCROFT   AND   COMPANY,    SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL. 

18G9. 


SHTKRSD  according  to  Act  or  Congress,  in  the  /ear  i869,  Ijy 

AMERICAN   PUBLISHING  CO., 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  Connecticut. 


Addfl 
.-<£'J 
GIFT 


Qsfcs 


T° 

^.OST  ^ATIENT  READER 

AND 
J^HAI^ITABLE        CRITIC, 


JHIS    YOLUME    is  y*t  FFE  CTI  o  N  ATE  LY 
INSCRIBED. 


PREFACE.* 


THIS  book  is  a  record  of  a  pleasure-trip.  If  it  were  a  record  of  a 
solemn  scientific  expedition,  it  would  have  about  it  that  gravity, 
that  profundity,  and  that  impressive  incomprehensibility  which  are 
so  proper  to  works  of  that  kind,  and  withal  so  attractive.  Yet  not 
withstanding  it  is  only  a  record  of  a  pic-nic,  it  has  a  purpose,  which 
is,  to  suggest  to  the  reader  how  he  would  be  likely  to  see  Europe  and 
the  East  if  he  looked  at  them  with  his  own  eyes  instead  of  the  eyes 
of  those  who  travelled  in  those  countries  before  him.  I  make  small 
pretence  of  showing  any  one  how  he  ought  to  look  at  objects  of 
interest  beyond  the  sea — other  books  do  that,  and  therefore,  even 
if  I  were  competent  to  do  it,  there  is  no  need. 

I  offer  no  apologies  for  any  departures  from  the  usual  style  of 
travel- writing  that  may  be  charged  against  me — for  I  think  I  have 
seen  with  impartial  eyes,  and  I  am  sure  I  have  written  at  least 
honestly,  whether  wisely  or  not. 

In  this  volume  I  have  used  portions  of  letters  which  I  wrote  for 
the  Daily  Alta  California,  of  San  Francisco,  the  proprietors  of  that 
journal  having  waived  their  rights  and  given  me  the  necessary 
permission.  I  have  also  inserted  portions  of  several  letters  written 
for  the  New  York  Tribune  and  the  New  York  Herald. 

THE   AUTHOR. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  1869. 


PAGE 

1.  THE  QUAKER  CITY  IN  A  STORM FRONTISPIECE — 

2.  ILLUMINATED  TITLE-PAGE — TUB  PILGRIM'S  VISION — 

3.  "  I  'LL  PAY  You  IN  PARIS  " 23 

4.  THE  START 30 

5.  "  GOOD  MORNING,  SIR  " 34 

6.  THE  OLD  PIRATK 36 

7.  DANCING  UNDER  DIFFICULTIES 42 

a  THE  MOCK  TRIAL 44 

9.  "  LAND,  no !  "   49 

10.  THE  CAPOTE 52 

11.  RUIN  AND  DESOLATION 53 

12.  PORT  OF  HORTA,  FAYAL  (FULL  PAGE),  PACE  PAGB 56 

13.  "  SEKKI-YAH  ! " 59 

14.  BEAUTIFUL  STRANGER 64 

15.  ROCK  OF  GIBRALTAR  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 65 

16.  "  QUEEN'S  CHAIR  " 67 

17.  THE  ORACLE 70 

IS.  THE  INTERROGATION  POINT 71 

19.  GARRISON  AT  MALABAT 72 

20.  ENTERTAINING  AN  ANGEL 74 

21.  Yfcw  OF  A  STREET  IN  TANGIER 77 

22.  CHANGE  FOR  A  NAPOLEON 81 

23.  THE  CONSUL'S  FAMILY S3 

24.  "  POET  LARIAT  " 91 

25.  FIRST  SUPPER  IN  FRANCE 95 

26.  PAINTING 96 

27.  RINGING  FOR  SOAP 99 

28.  "  WINE,  SIR  !  " 100 

29.  THE  PILGRIM 101 

30.  TUB  PRISONER 103 

31.  HOMELESS  FRANCE  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 106 

32.  RAILROAD  OFFICIAL  IN  FRANCE 108 

33.  "  FITE  MINUTES  FOR  REFRESHMENTS."    A  MERICA 109 


ILLUSTRATIONS.  vii 

PAGE 

84.  "  THIRTY  MINUTES  FOK  DINNER."    FRANCE 110 

85.  THE  OLD  TRAVELLER Ill 

86.  A  DECIDED  SHAVE 115 

8T.  A  GAS-TLY  SUBSTITUTE 117 

88.  THE  THREE  GUIDES 119 

89.  "  ZE  SILK  M AQ AJJIN  " 122 

40.  RETURN  IN  WAR  PAINT 124 

41.  NAPOLEON  III t 126 

42.  ABDUL  Aziz 126 

43.  THE  MORGUE 182 

44.  WE  TOOK  A  WALK 185 

45.  THE  CAN-CAN 186 

46.  GRAVES  OF  AUKL ARD  AND  HKLOISE 141 

47.  A  PAIR  OF  CANONS  OF  13TH  CENTURY 142 

48.  THE  PRIVATE  MARRIAOK 144 

49.  AMERICAN  DHINKS 148 

50.  ROYAL  HONORS  TO  A  YANKEE. 150 

51.  THE  GRISETTE 151 

52.  FOUNTAIN  AT  VERSAILLES 154 

53.  WOMEN  OF  GENOA 161 

54.  PETRIFIED  LACKEY 163 

55.  PRIEST  AND  FRIAR 164 

56.  STATUE  OF  COLUMBUS 168 

57.  GRAVES  OF  SIXTY  THOUSAND 169 

58.  EOOF  AND  SPIRES  OF  CATHEDRAL  AT  MILAN  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 172 

59.  CENTRAL  DOOR  OF  CATHEDRAL  AT  MILAN 173 

60.  INTERIOR  OF  CATHEDRAL  AT  MILAN 174 

61.  BOYHOOD'S  EXPERIENCE 176 

62.  TREASURES  OF  THE  CATHEDRAL. 179 

68.  CATHEDRAL  AT  MILAN 181 

64  LA  SCALA  THEATRE 184 

65.  COPYING  FROM  OLD  MASTERS 191 

66.  FACIAL  EXPRESSION 194 

67.  THE  ECHO 196 

68.  NOTEBOOK 197 

69.  A  Kiss  FOR  A  FRANO 198 

70.  THE  FUMIGATION 200 

71.  LAKE  COMO 202 

72.  GARDEN,  LAKE  COMO  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 204 

73.  SOCIAL  DRIVER 207 

74.  WAYSIDE  SHRINE 208 

75.  PEACE  AND  HAPPINESS 209 

76.  CASTLE  OF  COUNT  LUIGI 210 

77.  THE  WICKED  BROTHER 216 

78.  DISGUSTED  GONDOLIER 220 

79.  CATHEDRAL  OF  ST.  MARK 7 226 

80.  THE  PEG 229 

81.  "  GOOD-BY  " 230 

82.  M'SIEUR  GOR-R-DONG 234 

83.  MONUMENT  TO  THE  DOGE 236 

84.  ST.  MARK.    BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS 238 

85.  ST.  MATTHEW.    BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS 238 

86.  ST.  JEROME.    BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS 288 

87.  ST.  SEBASTIAN.    BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS 239 

88.  ST.  UNKNOWN.    BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS  . .   239 


viii  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

89.  RIALTO  BRIDGE 241 

90.  BRIDGE  OF  SIGHS 241 

91.  FLORENCE 245 

92.  TUB  PENSIONER 246 

98.  '•  I  WANT  TO  GO  HOME  " 248 

94.  TUB  LEANING  TOWER , 250 

95.  THE  CONTRAST 258 

96.  ITALIAN  PASTIMES 263 

97.  INCENDIARY  DOCUMENT 264 

98.  A  EOMAN  OF  1S69 267 

99.  MAMERTINE  PRISON „ 276 

100.  OLD  ROMAN 278 

101.  COLISEUM  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 281 

102.  DID  NOT  COMPLAIN 285 

103.  HUMBOLDT  HOUSE 2S6 

104.  DAN 2SS 

105.  BRONZE  STATUE 2S9 

106.  PENMANSHIP 291 

107.  ON  A  BUST 293 

108.  VAULTS  OF  TIIE  CONTENT 299 

109.  DRIED  CONVENT  FRUITS 802 

110.  AT  THE  STORE 303 

111.  AT  HOME 304 

112.  SOOTHING  THE  PILGRIMS 309 

113.  ASCENT  OF  MT.  VESUVIUS „ 313 

114  BAY  OF  NAPLES 316 

115.  THE  MUSTANG 319 

116.  ISLAND  OF  CAPKI 320 

117.  BLUE  GitoTTo 321 

118.  VESUVIUS  AND  BAY  OF  NAPLES  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 323 

119.  THE  DESCENT- 825 

120.  RUINS,  POMPEII 327 

121.  FORUM  OF  JUSTICE,  POMPEII 330 

122.  HOUSE,  POMPEII 335 

123.  STROMBOLI 338 

124.  VIEW  OF  THE  ACROPOLIS.  LOOKING  "WEST 341 

125.  "  IIo  !" 343 

126.  THE  ASSAULT 344 

127.  THE  CARYATIDES 846 

128.  THE  PARTHENON  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 348 

129.  WE  SIDLED,  NOT  RAN 350 

130.  ANCIENT  ACROPOLIS 852 

131.  TAIL  PIECE,  RUINS 353 

132.  QUEEN  OF  GREECE 855 

133.  PALACE  AT  ATHENS 356 

134.  STREET  SCENE  IN  CONSTANTINOPLE  (FULL  PAGE)  FACE  PAGE 859 

135.  GOOSE  RANCHER 3GO 

136.  MOSQUE  OF  ST.  SOPHIA. 863 

137.  TURKISH  MAUSOLEUM 865 

138.  SLANDERED  DOGS 371 

139.  THE  CENSOR  ON  DUTY 374 

140.  TURKISH  BATH 378 

141.  FAR-AWAY-MOSES 382 

142.  A  FRAGMENT 385 

143.  TAIL-PIECE— A  MEMENTO . .  886 


ILLUSTRATIONS.  ix 


PAGE 

144.  YALTA  FROM  THE  EMPEROR'S  PALACE 392 

145.  EMPEROR  OF  RUSSIA 393 

146.  TINSEL  KING 399 

147.  SHIP  EMPEROR 404 

148.  THE  RECEPTION 405 

149.  STREET  SCENE  ix  SMYRNA.    411 

150.  SMYRNA, 413 

151.  AN  APPARENT  SUCCESS 416 

152.  DRIFTING  TO  STARBOARD 419 

158.  A  SPOILED  NAP 420 

154.  ANCIENT  AMPHITHEATRE  AT  EPHESUS 422 

155.  MODERN  AMPHITHEATRE  AT  EPHESUS 423 

156.  RUINS  OF  EPHESUS 424 

157.  THE  JOURNEY 425 

158.  GRAVES  OF  THE  SEVEN  SLEEPERS 429 

159.  THE  SELECTION    434 

160.  CAMPING  OUT.  .   436 

161.  TAIL  PIECE— ARABS'  TENTS 437 

162.  A  GOOD  FEEDER.   489 

163.  INTERESTING  FKTE 440 

164.  SUNDAY  SCHOOL  GRAPES 442 

165.  AN  OLD  FOGY 445 

166.  RACE  WITH  A  CAMEL 446 

167.  TEMPLE  OF  THE  SUN 447 

168.  RUINS  OF  BAALBEC 449 

169.  HEWN  STONES  IN  QUARRY , 450 

170.  MERCY 452 

171.  PATRON  SAINT 453 

172.  WATER  CARRIER 455 

173.  VIEW  OF  DAMASCUS,  (FULL  PAGE)  FACE  PAGE 456 

174.  STREET  CARS  OF  DAMASCUS 460 

175.  FULL  DRESSED  TOURIST 466 

176.  IMPROMPTU  HOSPITAL 474 

177.  THE  HORSE  kl  BAALBEC" 476 

178.  OAK  OF  BASHAN 479 

179.  DANGEROUS  ARAB 482 

180.  GRIMES  ON  THE  WAR-PATH 483 

181.  TAIL-PIECE—BEDOUIN  CAMP 487 

182.  HOME  OF  ANCIENT  POMP 489 

153.  JACK 490 

184.  A  DISAPPOINTED  AUDIENCE 491 

185.  FIG-TREE 495 

1S6.  ';  FARE  TOO  HIGH  " 497 

187.  SYRIAN  HOUSE 504 

188.  TIBERIAS  AND  SEA  or  GALILEE 506 

189.  THE  GUARD 516 

190.  MOUNT  TABOR 521 

191.  TAIL-PIECE— GATHERING  FUEL 524 

192.  FOUNTAIN  OF  THE  VIRGIN 530 

193.  "  MADONNA-LIKE  BEAUTY  " 531 

194.  PUTNAM  OUTDONE 533 

195.  THE  BASTINADO 535 

196.  "  I  WEPT  "  530 

197.  WANT  OF  DIGNITY 539 

19S.  AN  ORIENTAL  WELL  . .  544 


ILLUSTRATIONS, 


PAGE 

199.  ARABS  SALITTING 545 

200.  FREE  SONS  OF  THE  DESERT 546 

201.  SHECIIKM 552 

2u2.  TAIL  PIECE — GATE  OF  JERUSALEM 555 

203.  BEGGARS  IN  JERUSALEM 559 

204.  CHURCH  OF  THE  HOLY  SEPULCHRE 5(54 

205.  GRAVE  OF  ADAM 566 

206.  VIEW  OF  JERUSALEM  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 574 

207.  THE  WANDERING  JEW 577 

208.  MOSQUE  OF  OMAR    5S1 

209.  AN  EPIDEMIC f,83 

210.  CHARGE  ON  BEDOUINS 590 

211.  DEAD  SEA 594 

212.  GROTTO  OF  THE  NATIVITY  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 001 

213.  JAFFA  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 606 

214.  REAR  ELEVATION  OF  JACK H10 

215.  STREET  IN  ALEXANDRIA fill 

216.  VICEROY  OF  EGYPT 012 

217.  EASTERN  MONARCH 614 

218.  MOSES  S.  BEACH 615 

219.  ROOM  No.  15 617 

220.  THE  NILOMETER 620 

221  ASCENT  OP  THE  PYRAMIDS 622 

222  HIGH  HOPES  FRUSTRATED 6^5 

223  KING'S  CHAMBER  IN  THE  PYRAMID,  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 626 

224.  A  POWERFUL  ARGUMENT 627 

225.  PYRAMIDS  AND  SPUYNX,  (FULL  PAGE),  FACE  PAGE 629 

226.  THE  RELIC  HUNTKR 630 

227    THE  MAMELUKE'S  LKAP 631 

228.  WOULD  NOT  BE  COMFORTED 633 

229.  TAIL  PIECE,  THE  TRAVELER 634 

230    HOMEWARD  BOUND 635 

231.  BAD  COFFEE 639 

232    OUR  FRIENDS  THE  BERMUDIANS ; 640 

233.  CAPTAIN  DUNCAN 641 

234.  TAIL  PIECE,  FINIS 651 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 
Popular  Talk  of  the  Excursion— Programme  of  the  Trip— Duly  Ticketed  for  the 

Excursion — Defection  of  the  Celebrities 19 

CHAPTER  II. 

Grand  Preparations — An  Imposing  Dignitary — The  European  Exodus — Mr. 
Blucher's  Opinion — Stateroom  No.  10 — The  Assembling  of  the  Clans — At 
Sea  at  last 26 

CHAPTER  III. 

"Averaging"  the  Passengers — "Far,  far  at  Sea" — Tribulation  among  the 
Patriarchs — Seeking  Amusement  under  Difficulties — Five  Captains  in  the 
Ship 32 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Pilgrims  Becoming  Domesticated — Pilgrim  Life  at  Sea — "  Horse-Billiards  " 
—The  "Synagogue" — The  Writing  School — Jack's  "Journal" — The 
"Q.  C.  Club" — The  Magic  Lantern— State  Ball  on  Deck — Mock  Trials — 
Charades— Pilgrim  Solemnity — Slow  Music — The  Executive  Officer  De 
livers  an  Opinion  38 

CHAPTER  V. 

Summer  in  Mid- Atlantic — An  Eccentric  Moon — Mr.  Blucher  Loses  Confidence 
—The  Mystery  of  "  Ship  Time  " — The  Denizens  of  the  Deep — "  Land- 
Ho!" — The  First  Landing  on  a  Foreign  Shore — Sensation  among  the 
Natives — Something  about  the  Azores  Islands-  -Blucher's  Disastrous  Din 
ner — The  Happy  Result , . . .  47 

CHAPTER  YI. 

Solid  Information — A  Fossil  Community — Curious  "Ways  and  Customs— Jesuit 
Humbuggery — Fantastic  Pilgrimizing — Origin  of  the  Russ  Pavement — 
Squaring  Accounts  with  the  Fossils — At  Sea  Again 55 

CHAPTER  VII. 

A  Tempest  at  Night — Spain  and  Africa  on  Exhibition — Greeting  a  Majestic 
Stranger — The  Pillars  of  Hercules — The  Rock  of  Gibraltar — Tiresome 
Repetition — "The  Queen's  Chair" — Serenity  Conquered — Curiosities  of 
the  Secret  Caverns — Personnel  of  Gibraltar — Some  Odd  Characters — A 
Private  Frolic  in  Africa — Bearding  a  Moorish  Garrison  (without  loss  of 
life) — Vanity  Rebuked — Disembarking  in  the  Empire  of  Morocco 62 


xii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAUB 

The  Ancient  City  of  Tangier,  Morocco— Strange  Sights — A  Cradle  of  An 
tiquity — We  become  Wealthy — How  they  Rob  the  Mail  in  Africa — The 
Danger  of  being  Opulent  in  Morocco 76 

CHAPTER  IX. 

A  Pilgrim  in  Deadly  Peril — How  they  Mended  the  Clock — Moorish  Punish 
ments  for  Crime — Marriage  Customs — Looking  Several  ways  for  Sunday — 
Shrewd  Practice  of  Mohammedan  Pilgrims — Reverence  for  Cats — Bliss  of 
being  a  Consul-General 83 

CHAPTER  X. 

Fourth  of  July  at  Sea — Mediterranean  Sunset — The  "  Oracle  "  is  Delivered  of 
an  Opinion — Celebration  Ceremonies — The  Captain's  Speech — France  in 
Sight — The  Ignorant  Native — In  Marseilles — Another  Blunder — Lost  in 
the  Great  City — Found  Again — A  Frenchy  Scene 90 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Getting  "Used  to  it  "—No  Soap— Bill  of  Fare,  Table  d'hote— "An  American 
Sir!" — A  Curious  Discovery — The  "Pilgrim"  Bird — Strange  Companion 
ship — A  Grave  of  the  Living — A  Long  Captivity — Some  of  Dumas'  He 
roes — Dungeon  of  the  Famous  "  Iron  Mask." 98 

CHAPTER  XII. 

A  Holiday  Flight  through  France — Summer  Garb  of  the  Landscape — Abroad 
on  the  Great  Plains — Peculiarities  of  French  Cars — French  Politeness — 
American  Railway  Officials — "Twenty  Mnutes  to  Dinner!" — Why  there 
are  no  Accidents — The  "Old  Travellers" — Still  on  the  Wing — Paris  at 
Last — French  Order  and  Quiet — Place  of  the  Bastile — Seeing  the  Sights 
— A  Barbarous  Atrocity — Absurd  Billiards 105 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

More  Trouble — Monsieur  Billfinger — Re-Christening  the  Frenchman — In  the 
Clutches  of  a  Paris  Guide — The  International  Exposition — Fine  Military 
Review — Glimpse  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon  and  the  Sultan  of  Turkey. ...  118 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

The  Venerable  Cathedral  of  Notre-Dame — Jean  Sanspeur's  Addition — Treas 
ures  and  Sacred  Relics — The  Legend  of  the  Cross — The  Morgue — The 
Outrageous  Can- Can — Blondin  Aflame — The  Louvre  Palace — The  Great 
Park — Showy  Pageantry — Preservation  of  Noted  Things 130 

CHAPTER  XV. 

French  National  Burying-Ground — Among  the  Great  Dead — The  Shrine  of 
Disappointed  Love — The  Story  of  Abelard  and  Heloise — "  English  Spoken 
Here  " — "  American  Drinks  Compounded  Here  " — Imperial  Honors  to  an 
American — The  Over-estimated  Grisette — Departure  from  Paris — A  De 
liberate  Opinion  Concerning  the  Comeliness  of  American  Women 139 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

Versailles — Paradise  Regained — A  Wonderful  Park — Paradise  Lost — Napole 
onic  Strategy 153 


CONTENTS.  xiii 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

PAGB 

War — The  American  Forces  Victorious — "Home  Again" — Italy  in  Sight — 
The  "  City  of  Palaces  " — Beauty  of  the  Genoese  Women — The  "  Stub- 
Hunters  " — Among  the  Palaces — Gifted  Guide — Church  Magnificence — 
"  Women  not  Admitted  " — How  the  Genoese  Live — Massive  Architecture 
— A  Scrap  of  Ancient  History — Graves  for  60,000 159 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Flying  Through  Italy — Marengo — First  Glimpse  of  the  Famous  Cathedral — 
Description  of  some  of  its  Wonders — A  Horror  Carved  in  Stone — An 
Unpleasant  Adventure — A  Good  Man — A  Sermon  from  the  Tomb — 
Tons  of  Gold  and  Silver — Some  More  Holy  Relics — Solomon's  Temple 
Rivalled 171 

CHAPTER   XIX. 

"  Do  You  Wis  zo  Haut  can  be  ?  " — La  Scala — Petrarch  and  Laura — Lucrezia 
Borgia — Ingenious  Frescoes — Ancient  Roman  Amphitheatre — A  Clever 
Delusion — Distressing  Billiards — The  Chief  Charm  of  European  Life — An 
Italian  Bath — Wanted:  Soap — Crippled  French — Mutilated  English — The 
Most  Celebrated  Painting  in  the  World — Amateur  Raptures — Uninspired 
Critics— Anecdote— A  Wonderful  Echo— A  Kiss  for  a  Franc 183 

CHAPTER  XX. 

Rural  Italy  by  Rail — Fumigated,  According  to  Law — The  Sorrowing  English 
man — Night  by  the  Lake  of  Como — The  Famous  Lake — Its  Scenery — 
Como  compared  with  Tahoe — Meeting  a  Shipmate 199 

CHAPTER   XXL 

The  Pretty  Lago  di  Lecco — A  Carriage  Drive  in  the  Country — Astonishing 
Sociability  in  a  Coachman — A  Sleepy  Land — Bloody  Shrines — The  Heart 
and  Home  of  Priestcraft — A  Thrilling  Mediaeval  Romance — The  Birthplace 
of  Harlequin — Approaching  Venice  .  207 

CHAPTER   XXII. 

Night  in  Venice — The  "  Gay  Gondolier  " — The  Grand  Fete  by  Moonlight — The 

Notable  Sights  of  Venice — The  Mother  of  the  Republics  Desolate 217 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

The  Famous  Gondola — The  Gondola  in  an  Unromantic  Aspect — The  Great 
Square  of  St.  Mark  and  the  Winged  Lion — Snobs,  at  Home  and  Abroad — 
Sepulchres  of  the  Great  Dead— A  Tilt  at  the  "  Old  Masters  "—A  Contra 
band  Guide — The  Conspiracy — Moving  Again 228 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

Down  Through  Italy  by  Rail — Idling  in  Florence — Dante  and  Galileo — An 
Ungrateful  City — Dazzling  Generosity — Wonderful  Mosaics — The  Histori 
cal  Arno — Lost  Again — Found  Again,  but  no  Fatted  Calf  Ready — The 
Leaning  Tower  of  Pisa — The  Ancient  Duomo — The  Old  Original  First 
Pendulum  that  Ever  Swung — An  Enchanting  Echo — A  New  Holy 
Sepulchre — A  Relic  of  Antiquity — A  Fallen  Republic — At  Leghorn — At 
Home  Again,  and  Satisfied,  on  Board  the  Ship — Our  Vessel  an  Object  of 
Grave  Suspicion — Gren.  Garibaldi  Visited — Threats  of  Quarantine 244 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

PACK 

The  "Works  of  Bankruptcy — Railway  Grandeur — How  to  Fill  an  Empty 
Treasury — The  Sumptuousness  of  Mother  Church — Ecclesiastical  Splen 
dor — Magnificence  and  Misery — General  Execration — More  Magnificence 
— A  Good  Word  for  the  Priests — Civita  Yecchia  the  Dismal — Off  for 
Rome 255 

CHAPTER   XXVI. 

The  Modern  Roman  on  His  Travels — The  Grandeur  of  St.  Peter's — Holy  Relics 
— Grand  View  from  the  Dome — The  Holy  Inquisition — Interesting  Old 
Monkish  Frauds — The  Ruined  Coliseum — The  Coliseum  in  the  Days  of 
its  Prime — Ancient  Play-bill  of  a  Coliseum  Performance — A  Roman 
Newspaper  Criticism  1700  Years  Old 266 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

"  Butchered  to  Make  a  Roman  Holiday  " — The  Man  who  Never  Complained 
— An  Exasperating  Subject — Asinine  Guides — The  Roman  Catacombs — 
The  Saint  Whose  Fervor  Burst  his  Ribs — The  Miracle  of  the  Bleeding 
Heart— The  Legend  of  Ara  Coeli 284 

CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

Picturesque  Horrors — The  Legend  of  Brother  Thomas — Sorrow  Scientifically 
Analyzed — A  Festive  Company  of  the  Dead — The  Great  Vatican  Museum 
— Artist  Sins  of  Omission — The  Rape  of  the  Sabines — Papal  Protection  of 
Art — High  Price  of  <:  Old  Masters  " — Improved  Scripture — Scale  of  Rank 
of  the  Holy  Personages  in  Rome — Scale  of  Honors  Accorded  Them — Fos 
silizing — Away  for  Naples 298 

CHAPTER   XXIX. 

Naples — In  Quarantine  at  Last — Annunciation — Ascent  of  Mount  Vesuvius 
— A  Two-Cent  Community — The  Black  Side  of  Neapolitan  Character — 
Monkish  Miracles — Ascent  of  Mount  Vesuvius  Continued — The  Stranger 
and  the  Hackman — Night  View  of  Naples  from  the  Mountain-side — 
Ascent  of  Vesuvius  Continued 308 

CHAPTER   XXX. 

Ascent  of  Vesuvius  Continued — Beautiful  View  at  Dawn — Less  Beautiful 
View  in  the  Back  Streets — Ascent  of  Vesuvius  Continued — Dwellings  a 
Hundred  Feet  High — A  Motley  Procession — Bill  of  Fare  for  a  Pedler's 
Breakfast — Princely  Salaries — Ascent  of  Vesuvius  Continued — An  Aver 
age  of  Prices— The  Wonderful  "  Blue  Grotto  " — Visit  to  Celebrated 
Localities  in  the  Bay  of  Naples — The  Poisoned  "  Grotto  of  the  Dog  " — A 
Petrified  Sea  of  Lava — The  Ascent  Continued — The  Summit  Reached — 
Description  of  the  Crater — Descent  of  Vesuvius 315 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

The  Buried  City  of  Pompeii — How  Dwellings  Appear  that  have  been  Unoccu 
pied  for  Eighteen  Hundred  Years — The  Judgment  Seat — Desolation — The 
Footprints  of  the  Departed — "No  Women  Admitted" — Theatres,  Bake- 
shops,  Schools,  etc. — Skeletons  Preserved  by  the  Ashes  and  Cinders — The 
Brave  Martyr  to  Duty — Rip  Van  Winkle — The  Perishable  Nature  of 
Fame 327 


CONTENTS.  XY 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 

PA6K 

At  Sea  Once  More — The  Pilgrims  all  Well — Superb  Stromboli — Sicily  by 
Moonlight— Scylla  and  Charybdis— The  "  Oracle  "  at  Fault— Skirting  the 
Isles  of  Greece — Ancient  Athens — Blockaded  by  Quarantine  and  Refused 
Permission  to  Enter — Running  the  Blockade — A  Bloodless  Midnight  Ad 
venture — Turning  Robbers  from  Necessity — Attempt  to  Carry  the  Acrop 
olis  by  Storm— We  Fail—Among  the  Glories  of  the  Past— A  World  of 
Ruined  Sculpture — A  Fairy  Vision — Famous  Localities — Retreating  in 
Good  Order — Captured  by  the  Guards — Travelling  in  Military  State — Safe 
on  Board  Again 337 

CHAPTER   XXXHL 

Modern  Greece — Fallen  Greatness — Sailing  Through  the  Archipelago  and  the 
Dardanelles — Footprints  of  History — The  First  Shoddy  Contractor  of 
whom  History  gives  any  Account — Anchored  Before  Constantinople — 
Fantastic  Fashions — The  Ingenious  Goose-Rancher — Marvellous  Cripples 
— The  Great  Mosque — The  Thousand  and  One  Columns — The  Grand 
Bazaar  of  Stamboul 354 

CHAPTER  XXXIY. 

Scarcity  of  Morals  and  Whiskey — Slave-Girl  Market  Report — Commercial 
Morality  at  a  Discount — The  Slandered  Dogs  of  Constantinople — Ques 
tionable  Delights  of  Newspaperdom  in  Turkey — Ingenious  Italian 
Journalism — No  More  Turkish  Lunches  Desired — The  Turkish  Bath 
Fraud — The  Narghileh  Fraud — Jaekplaned  by  a  Native — The  Turkish 
Coffee  Fraud 368 

CHAPTER  XXXY. 

Sailing  Through  the  Bosporus  and  the  Black  Sea — "  Far- A  way  Moses  " — 
Melancholy  Sebastopol — Hospitably  Received  in  Russia — Pleasant  Eng 
lish  People — Desperate  Fighting — Relic  Hunting — How  Travellers  Form 
"  Cabinets  " 381 

CHAPTER   XXXYI. 

Nine  Thousand  Miles  East — Imitation  American  Town  in  Russia — Gratitude 

that  Came  Too  Late— To  Visit  the  Autocrat  of  All  the  Russias 387 

\ 

CHAPTER  XXXVIL 

Summer  Home  of  Royalty — Practising  for  the  Dread  Ordeal — Committee  on 
Imperial  Address — Reception  by  the  Emperor  and  Family — Dresses  of 
the  Imperial  Party — Concentrated  Power — Counting  the  Spoons — At  the 
Grand  Duke's— A  Charming  Villa — A  Knightly  Figure — The  Grand 
Duchess — A  Grand  Ducal  Breakfast — Baker's  Boy,  the  Famine-Breeder — 
Theatrical  Monarchs  a  Fraud — Saved  as  by  Fire — The  Governor-Gen 
eral's  Visit  to  the  Ship — Official  "Style  " — Aristocratic  Visitors — "Mun- 
chausenizing  "  with  Them — Closing  Ceremonies 390 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

Return  to  Constantinople — We  Sail  for  Asia — The  Sailors  Burlesque  the 
Imperial  Visitors — Ancient  Smyrna — The  "  Oriental  Splendor  "  Fraud — 
The  "Biblical  Crown  of  Life  "—Pilgrim  Prophecy-Savans— Sociable 
Armenian  Girls — A  Sweet  Reminiscence — "The  Camels  are  Coming, 
Ha-hal"..  ...  403 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   XXXIX. 

PAGE 

Smyrna's  Lions— The  Martyr  Polycarp— The  "  Seven  Churches  "—Remains 
of  the  Six  Smyrnas — Mysterious  Oyster  Mine — Oysters  Seeking  Scen 
ery — A  Millerite  Tradition — A  Railroad  Out  of  its  Sphere 412 

CHAPTER   XL. 

Journeying  Toward  Ancient  Ephesus — Ancient  Ayassalook — The  Yillanous 
Donkey — A  Fantastic  Procession — Bygone  Magnificence — Fragments  of 
History — The  Legend  of  the  Seven  Sleepers 418 

CHAPTER   XLI. 

Vandalism    Prohibited — Angry    Pilgrims — Approaching   Holy    Land! — The 
"Shrill  Note  of  Preparation — Distress  About  Dragomans  and  Transporta 
tion — The  "Long  Route"  Adopted — In  Syria — Something  about  Beirout 
-A  Choice  Specimen  of  a  Greek  "  Ferguson  " — Outfits — Hideous  Horse 
flesh—Pilgrim  "  Style  "—What  of  Aladdin's  Lamp  ? 430 

CHAPTER   XLII. 

'•Jacksonville,"  in  the  Mountains  of  Lebanon — Breakfasting  above  a  Grand 
Panorama — The  Vanished  City — The  Peculiar  Steed,  "Jericho" — The 
Pilgrim's  Progress — Bible  Scenes — Mount  Hermon,  Joshua's  Battle- 
Fields,  etc.— The  Tomb  of  Noah— A  Most  Unfortunate  People 438 

CHAPTER  XLIII. 

Patriarchal  Customs — Magnificent  Baalbec — Description  of  the  Ruins — Scrib 
bling  Smiths  and  Joneses — Pilgrim  Fidelity  to  the  Letter  of  the  Law — The 
Revered  Fountain  of  Baalam's  Ass 445 

CHAPTER  XLIV. 

Extracts  from  Note-Book — Mahomet's  Paradise  and  the  Bible's — Beautiful  Da 
mascus,  the  Oldest  City  on  Earth — Oriental  Scenes  within  the  Curious  Old 
City — Damascus  Street  Car — The  Story  of  St.  Paul — The  "Street  called 
Straight  " — Mahomet's  Tomb  and  St.  George's — The  Christian  Massacre — 
Mohammedan  Dread  of  Pollution — The  House  of  Naaman — The  Horrors 
of  Leprosy 454 

CHAPTER  XLV. 

The  Cholera  by  way  of  Variety — Hot — Another  Outlandish  Procession — Pen- 
and-ink  Photograph  of  "  Jonesborough,"  Syria — Tomb  of  Nimrod,  the 
Mighty  Hunter — The  Stateliest  Ruin  of  All — Stepping  over  the  Borders 
of  Holy  Land — Bathing  in  the  Sources  of  Jordan — More  "  Specimen  "- 
Hunting— Ruins  of  Cesarea-Philippi— "  On  This  Rock  Will  I  Build  my 
Church  " — The  People  the  Disciples  Knew — The  Noble  Steed  u  Baalbec  " 
— Sentimental  Horse  Idolatry  of  the  Arabs 465 

CHAPTER  XLVI. 

Dan — Bashan — Genessaret — A  Notable  Panorama — Smallness  of  Palestine — 
Scraps  of  History — Character  of  the  Country — Bedouin  Shepherds — 
Glimpses  of  the  Hoary  Past — Mr.  Grimes's  Bedouins — A  Battle-Ground 
of  Joshua — That  Soldier's  Manner  of  Fighting — Barak's  Battle — The 
Necessity  of  Unlearning  Some  Things — Desolation 478 


CONTENTS.  xvii 

CHAPTER  XLVII. 

PAGE 

Jack's  Adventure — Joseph's  Pit — The  Story  of  Joseph — Joseph's  Magnanim 
ity  and  Esau's — The  Sacred  Lake  of  Genessaret — Enthusiasm  of  the  Pil 
grims — Why  We  did  not  Sail  on  Galilee — About  Capernaum — Concerning 
the  Saviour's  Brothers  and  Sisters — Journeying  toward  Magdala 488 

CHAPTER  XLVIII. 

Curious  Specimens  of  Art  and  Architecture — Public  Reception  of  the  Pilgrims 
— Mary  Magdalen's  House — Tiberias  and  its  Queer  Inhabitants — The  Sa 
cred  Sea  of  Galilee — Galilee  by  Night, 503 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 

Tho  Ancient  Baths — Ye  Apparition — A  Distinguished  Panorama — The  Last 
Battle  of  the  Crusades — The  Story  of  the  Lord  of  Kerak — Mount  Tabor — 
What  one  Sees  from  its  Top — A  Memory  of  a  Wonderful  Garden — The 
House  of  Deborah  the  Prophetess 514 

CHAPTER  L. 

Toward  Nazareth — Bitten  By  a  Camel — Grotto  of  the  Annunciation,  Nazareth 
— Noted  Grottoes  in  General — Joseph's  Workshop — A  Sacred  Bowlder — 
The  Fountain  of  the  Virgin — Questionable  Female  Beauty — Literary  Cu 
riosities 525 

CHAPTER  LI. 

The  Boyhood  of  the  Saviour — Unseemly  Antics  of  Sober  Pilgrims — Home  of 
the  Witch  of  Endor — Nain — Profanation — A  Popular  Oriental  Picture — 
Biblical  Metaphors  Becoming  steadily  More  Intelligible — The  Shuuem 
Miracle — The  "  Free  Son  of  The  Desert " — Ancient  Jezrtel — Jehu's 
Achievements — Samaria  and  its  Famous  Siege 537 

CHAPTER  LIT. 

A  Curious  Remnant  of  the  Past — Shechem — The  Oldest  "  First  Family  "  on 
P^arth — The  Oldest  Manuscript  Extant — The  Genuine  Tomb  of  Joseph — 
Jacob's  Well — Shiloh — Camping  with  the  Arabs — Jacob's  Ladder — More 
Desolation — Ramah,  Beroth,  the  Tomb  of  Samuel,  the  Fountain  of  Beira 
— Impatience — Approaching  Jerusalem — The  Holy  City  in  Sight — Noting 
its  Prominent  Features — Domiciled  Within  the  Sacred  Walls 551 

CHAPTER  LIII. 

"  The  Joy  of  the  Whole  Earth  " — Description  of  Jerusalem — Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre — The  Stone  of  Unction — The  Grave  of  Jesus — Graves 
of  Nicodemus  and  Joseph  of  Arimathea — Places  of  the  Apparition — The 
Finding  of  the  Three  Crosses — The  Legend — Monkish  Impostures — Tho 
Pillar  of  Flagellation — The  Place  of  a  Relic — Godfrey's  Sword--"  The 
Bonds  of  Christ" — "The  Center  of  the  Earth" — Place  whence  the  Dust 
was  taken  of  which  Adam  was  Made — Grave  of  Adam — The  Martyred 
Soldier — The  Copper  Plate  that  was  On  the  Cross — The  Good  St.  Helena 
— Place  of  the  Division  of  the  Garments — St.  Dimas,  the  Penitent  Thief — 
The  Late  Emperor  Maximilian's  Contribution — Grotto  wherein  the  Crosses 
were  Found,  and  the  Nails,  and  the  Crown  of  Thorns — Chapel  of  the 
Mocking — Tomb  of  Melchizedek — Graves  of  Two  Renowned  Crusaders 
—The  Place  of  the  Crucifixion 558 


xviii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   LIY. 

PAGE 

The  "  Sorrowful  Way  "—The  Legend  of  St.  Veronica's  Handkerchief— An  Il 
lustrious  Stone — House  of  the  Wandering  Jew — The  Tradition  of  the 
Wanderer — Solomon's  Temple — Mosque  of  Omar — Moslem  Traditions — 
"  Women  not  Admitted  " — The  Fate  of  a  Gossip — Turkish  Sacred  Relics 
— Judgment  Seat  of  David  and  Saul — Genuine  Precious  Remains  of 
Solomon's  Temple — Surfeited  with  Sights — The  Pool  of  Siloam — The  Gar 
den  of  Gethsemane  and  Other  Sacred  Localities 574 

CHAPTER  LY. 

Rebellion  in  the  Camp — Charms  of  Nomadic  Life — Dismal  Rumors — En  Route 
for  Jericho  and  The  Dead  Sea — Pilgrim  Strategy — Bethany  and  the  Dwell 
ing  of  Lazarus — "Bedouins!" — Ancient  Jericho — Misery — The  Night 
March — The  Dead  Sea — An  Idea  of  What  a  "Wilderness  "  in  Palestine  is 
— The  Holy  Hermits  of  Mars  Saba — Good  St.  Saba — Women  not  Admit 
ted — Buried  from  the  World  for  all  Time — Unselfish  Catholic  Benevolence 
— Gazelles — The  Plain  of  the  Shepherds — Birthplace  of  the  Saviour, 
Bethlehem — Church  of  the  Nativity — Its  Hundred  Holy  Places — The  Fa 
mous  "  Milk  "  Grotto — Tradition — Return  to  Jerusalem — Exhausted.  . . .  586 

CHAPTER  LVI. 

Departure  from  Jerusalem — Samson — The  Plain  of  Sharon — Arrival  at  Joppa 
— House  of  Simon  the  Tanner — The  Long  Pilgrimage  Ended — Character 
of  Palestine  Scenery — The  Curse 604 

CHAPTER  LYII. 

The  Happiness  of  being  at  Sea  once  more — "  Home"  as  it  is  in  a  Pleasure- 
Ship— "  Shaking  Hands"  with  the  Yessel — Jack  in  Costume — His  Fa 
ther's  Parting  Advice — Approaching  Egypt — Ashore  in  Alexandria — A 
Deserved  Compliment  for  the  Donkeys — Invasion  of  the  Lost  Tribes  of 
America — End  of  the  Celebrated  "Jaffa  Colony" — Scenes  in  Grand  Cai- 
ro^-Shepheard's  Hotel  Contrasted  with  a  Certain  American  Hotel — Pre 
paring  for  the  Pyramids 609 

CHAPTER   LYIII. 

"Recherche  "  Donkeys — A  Wild  Ride — Specimens  of  Egyptian  Modesty — Mo 
ses  in  the  Bulrushes — Place  where  the  Holy  Family  Sojourned — Distant 
view  of  the  Pyramids — A  Nearer  Yiew — The  Ascent — Superb  View 
from  the  top  of  the  Pyramid — "Backsheesb!  Backsheesh  !  " — An  Arab 
Exploit — In  the  Bowels  of  the  Pyramid — Strategy — Reminiscence  of 
"Holiday's  Hill" — Boyish  Exploit — The  Majestic  Sphynx — Things  the 
Author  will  not  Tell — Grand  Old  Egypt. . , 618 

CHAPTER    LIX. 

Going  Home — A  Demoralized  Note-Book — A  Boy's  Diary — Mere  Mention  of 
Old  Spain — Departure  from  Cadiz — A  Deserved  Rebuke — The  Beautiful 
Madeiras — Tabooed — In  the  Delightful  Bermudas — An  English  Welcome 
— Good-by  to  "Our  Friends  the  Bermudians  " — Packing  Trunks  for  Home 
— Our  First  Accident — The  Long  Cruise  Drawing  to  a  Close — At  Home 
Amen 635 

CHAPTER  LX. 
Thankless  Devotion — A  Newspaper  Valedictory — Conclusion 638 


CHAPTER   I. 

FOE  months  the  great  Pleasure  Excursion  to  Europe  and 
the  Holy  Land  was  chatted  about  in  the  newspapers 
every  where  in  America,  and  discussed  at  countless  firesides. 
It  was  a  novelty  in  the  way  of  Excursions — its  like  had  not 
been  thought  of  before,  and  it  compelled  that  interest  which 
attractive  novelties  always  command.  It  was  to  be  a  picnic 
on  a  gigantic  scale.  The  participants  in  it,  instead  of  freight 
ing  an  ungainly  steam  ferry-boat  with  youth  and  beauty  and 
pies  and  doughnuts,  and  paddling  up  some  obscure  creek  to 
disembark  upon  a  grassy  lawn  and  wear  themselves  out  with 
a  long  summer  day's  laborious  frolicking  under  the  impression 
that  it  was  fun,  were  to  sail  away  in  a  great  steamship  with 
flags  flying  and  cannon  pealing,  and  take  a  royal  holiday 
beyond  the  broad  ocean,  in  many  a  strange  clime  and  in  many 
a  land  renowned  in  history!  They  were  to  sail  for  months 
over  the  breezy  Atlantic  and  the  sunny  Mediterranean ;  they 
were  to  scamper  about  the  decks  by  day,  filling  the  ship  with 
shouts  and  laughter — or  read  novels  and  poetry  in  the  shade 
of  the  smoke-stacks,  or  watch  for  the  jelly-fish  and  the  nau 
tilus,  over  the  side,  and  the  shark,  the  whale,  and  other  strange 
monsters  of  the  deep ;  and  at  night  they  were  to  dance  in  the 
open  air,  on  the  upper  deck,  in  the  midst  of  a  ball-room  that 
stretched  from  horizon  to  horizon,  and  was  domed  by  the  bend 
ing  heavens  and  lighted  by  no  meaner  lamps  than  the  stars 
and  the  magnificent  moon — dance,  and  promenade,  and 
smoke,  and  sing,  and  make  love,  and  search  the  skies  for  con 
stellations  that  never  associate  with  the  "  Big  Dipper  "  they 


20  A     SEDUCTIVE     PROGRAMME. 

were  so  tired  of;  and  they  were  to  see  the  ships  of  twenty 
navies — the  customs  and  costumes  of  twenty  curious  peoples 
— the  great  cities  of  half  a  world — they  were  to  hob-nob  with 
nobility  and  hold  friendly  converse  with  kings  and  princes, 
Grand  Moguls,  and  the  anointed  lords  of  mighty%empires  ! 

It  was  a  brave  conception  ;  it  was  the  offspring  of  a  most 
ingenious  brain.  It  was  well  advertised,  but  it  hardly  needed 
it :  the  bold  originality,  the  extraordinary  character,  the  seduc 
tive  nature,  and  the  vastness  of  the  enterprise  provoked  com 
ment  every  where  and  advertised  it  in  every  household  in  the 
land.  Who  could  read  the  programme  of  the  excursion  with 
out  longing  to  make  one  of  the  party  ?  I  will  insert  it  here. 
It  is  almost  as  good  as  a  map.  As  a  text  for  this  book,  noth 
ing  could  be  better : 


EXCURSION"  TO   THE   HOLY  LAND,    EGYPT,    THE   CRIMEA,    GREECE, 
AND   INTERMEDIATE    POINTS   OF   INTEREST. 

BROOKLYN,  February  1st,  1867. 

The  undersigned  will  make  an  excursion  as  above  during  the  coming  season,  and 
begs  to  submit  to  you  the  following  programme: 

A  first-class  steamer,  to  be  under  his  own  command,  and  capable  of  accommo 
dating  at  least  one  hundred  arid  fifty  cabin  passengers,  will  be  selected,  in  'which 
will  be  taken  a  select  company,  numbering  not  more  than  three-fourths  of  the  ship's 
capacity.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  this  company  can  be  easily  made 
up  in  this  immediate  vicinity,  of  mutual  friends  and  acquaintances. 

The  steamer  will  be  provided  with  every  necessary  comfort,  including  library  and 
musical  instruments. 

An  experienced  physician  will  be  on  board. 

Leaving  New  York  about  June  1st,  a  middle  and  pleasant  route  will  be  taken 
across  the  Atlantic,  and  passing  through  the  group  of  Azores,  St.  Michael  will  be 
reached  in  about  ten  days.  A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  here,  enjoying  the  fruit  and 
wild  scenery  of  these  islands,  and  the  voyage  continued,  and  Gibraltar  reached  in 
three  or  four  days. 

A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  here  in  looking  over  the  wonderful  subterraneous 
fortifications,  permission  to  visit  these  galleries  being  readily  obtained. 

From  Gibraltar,  running  along  the  coasts  of  Spain  and  France,  Marseilles  will  be 
reached  in  three  days.  Here  ample  time  will  be  given  not  only  to  look  over  the  city, 
which  was  founded  six  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  its  artificial  port, 
the  finest  of  the  kind  in  the  Mediterranean,  but  to  visit  Paris  during  the  Great  Ex 
hibition  ;  and  the  beautiful  city  of  Lyons,  lying  intermediate,  from  the  heights  of 


A      SEDUCTIVE     PROGRAMME.  21 

which,  on  a  clear  day,  Mont  Blanc  and  the  Alps  can  be  distinctly  seen.  Passen 
gers  who  may  wish  to  extend  the  time  at  Paris  can  do  so,  and,  passing  down 
through  Switzerland,  rejoin  the  steamer  at  Genoa. 

From  Marseilles  to  Genoa  is  a  run  of  one  night.  The  excursionists  will  have  an 
opportunity  to  look  over  this,  the  "magnificent  city  of  palaces,"  and  visit  the  birth 
place  of  Columbus,  twelve  miles  oft',  over  a  beautiful  road  built  by  Napoleon  I. 
From  this  point,  excursions  may  be  made  to  Milan,  Lakes  Como  and  Maggiore,  or 
to  Milan,  Verona,  (famous  for  its  extraordinary  fortifications,)  Padua,  and  Venice. 
Or,  if  passengers  desire  to  visit  Parma  (famous  for  Correggio's  frescoes,)  and  Bo 
logna,  they  can  by  rail  go  on  to  Florence,  and  rejoin  the  steamer  at  Leghorn,  thus 
spending  about  three  weeks  amid  the  cities  most  famous  for  art  in  Italy. 

From  Genoa  the  run  to  Leghorn  will  be  made  along  the  coast  in  one  night,  and 
time  appropriated  to  this  point  in  which  to  visit  Florence,  its  palaces  and  galleries; 
Pisa,  its  Cathedral  and  "Leaning  Tower,"  and  Lucca  and  its  baths,  and  Roman 
amphitheatre ;  Florence,  the  most  remote,  being  distant  by  rail  about  sixty  miles. 

From  Leghorn  to  Naples,  (calling  at  Civita  Vecchia  to  land  any  who  may  prefer 
to  go  to  Rome  from  that  point,)  the  distance  will  be  made  in  about  thirty-six  hours; 
the  route  will  lay  along  the  coast  of  Itaty,  close  by  Caprera,  Elba,  and  Corsica. 
Arrangements  have  been  made  to  take  on  board  at  Leghorn  a  pilot  for  Caprera, 
and,  if  practicable,  a  call  will  be  made  there  to  visit  the  home  of  Garibaldi. 

Rome,  [by  rail]  Herculaneum,  Pompeii,  Vesuvius,  Virgil's  tomb,  and  possibly, 
the  ruins  of  Psestum,  can  be  visited,  as  well  as  the  beautiful  surroundings  of  Naples 
and  its  charming  bay. 

The  next  point  of  interest  will  be  Palermo,  the  most  beautiful  city  of  Sicily, 
which  will  be  reached  in  one  night  from  Naples.  A  day  will  be  spent  here,  and 
leaving  in  the  evening,  the  course  will  be  taken  towards  Athens. 

Skirting  along  the  north  coast  of  Sicily,  passing  through  the  group  of  ^Eolian 
Isles,  in  sight  of  Stromboli  and  Vulcania,  both  active  volcanoes,  through  the  Straits 
of  Messina,  with  "Scylla"  on  the  one  hand  and  "Charybdis"  on  the  other,  along 
the  east  coast  of  Sicily,  and  in  sight  of  Mount  yEtna,  along  the  south  coast  of  Italy, 
the  west  and  south  coast  of  Greece,-  in  sight  of  ancient  Crete,  up  Athens  Gulf,  and 
into  the  Pirrcus,  Athens  will  be  reached  in  two  and  a  half  or  three  days.  After 
tarrying  here  awhile,  the  Bay  of  Salamis  will  be  crossed,  and  a  day  given  to  Cor 
inth,  whence  the  voyage  will  be  continued  to  Constantinople,  passing  on  the  way 
through  the  Grecian  Archipelago,  the  Dardanelles,  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  an^  the 
moutii  of  the  Golden  Horn,  and  arriving  in  about  forty-eight  hours  from  Athens. 

After  leaving  Constantinople,  the  way  will  be  taken  out  through  the  beautiful 
Bosphorus,  across  the  Black  Sea  to  Sebastopol  and  Balaklava,  a  run  of  about 
twenty-four  hours.  Here  it  is  proposed  to  remain  two  days,  visiting  the  harbors, 
fortifications,  and  battle-fields  of  the  Crimea ;  thence  back  through  the  Bosphorus, 
touching  at  Constantinople  to  take  in  any  who  may  have  preferred  to  remain  there; 
down  through  the  Sea  of  Marmora  and  the  Dardanelles,  along  the  coasts  of  ancient 
Troy  and  Lydia  in  Asia,  to  Smyrna,  which  will  be  reached  in  two  or  two  and  a  half 
days  from  Constantinople.  A  sufficient  stay  will  be  made  here  to  give  opportunity 
of  visiting  Ephesus,  fifty  miles  distant  by  rail. 

From  Smyrna  towards  the  Holy  Laud  the  course  will  lay  through  the  Grecian 


22  A     SEDUCTIVE     PROGRAMME. 

Archipelago,  close  by  the  Isle  of  Patmos,  along  the  coast  of  Asia,  ancient  Pam- 
phylia,  and  the  Isle  of  Cyprus.  Beirout  will  be  reached  in  three  days.  At  Beirout 
time  will  be  given  to  visit  Damascus ;  after  which  the  steamer  will  proceed  to 
Joppa. 

From  Joppa,  Jerusalem,  the  River  Jordan,  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  Nazareth,  Beth 
any,  Bethlehem,  and  other  points  of  interest  in  the  Holy  Land  can  be  visited,  and 
here  those  who  may  have  preferred  to  make  the  journey  from  Bierout  through  the 
country,  passing  through  Damascus,  Galilee,  Capernaum,  Samaria,  and  by  the 
River  Jordan  and  Sea  of  Tiberias,  can  rejoin  the  steamer. 

Leaving  Joppa,  the  next  point  of  interest  to  visit  will  be  Alexandria,  which  will 
be  reached  in  twenty-four  hours.  The  ruins  of  C;esar's  Palace,  Pompey's  Pillar, 
Cleopatra's  Needle,  the  Catacombs,  and  ruins  of  ancient  Alexandria,  will  be  found 
worth  the  visit.  The  journey  to  Cairo,  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles  by  rail,  can  be 
made  in  a  few  hours,  and  from  which  can  be  visited  the  site  of  ancient  Memphis, 
Joseph's  Granaries,  and  the  Pyramids. 

From  Alexandria  the  route  will  be  taken  homeward,  calling  at  Malta,  Cagliari 
(in  Sardinia,)  and  Parma  (in  Majorca,)  all  magnificent  harbors,  with  charming 
scenery,  and  abounding  in  fruits. 

A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  at  each  place,  and  leaving  Parma  in  the  evening. 
Valencia  in  Spain  will  be  reached  the  next  morning.  A  few  days  will  be  spent  in 
this,  the  finest  city  of  Spain.  „ 

From  Valencia,  the  homeward  course  will  be  continued,  skirting  along  the  coast 
of  Spain.  Alicant,  Carthagena,  Palos,  and  Malaga,  will  be  passed  but  a  mile  or 
two  distant,  and  Gibraltar  reached  in  about  twenty-four  hours. 

A  stay  of  one  day  will  be  made  here,  and  the  voyage  continued  to  Madeira, 
which  will  be  reached  in  about  three  days.  Captain  Marryatt  writes :  <:  I  do  not 
know  a  spot  on  the  globe  which  so  much  astonishes  and  delights  upon  first  arrival 
as  Madeira."  A  stay  of  one  or  two  days  will  be  made  here,  which,  if  time  per 
mits,  may  be  extended,  and  passing  on  through  the  islands,  and  probably  in  sight 
of  the  Peak  of  TerierifFc,  a  southern  track  wi  1  be  taken,  and  the  Atlantic  crossed 
within  the  latitudes  of  the  Northeast  trade  winds,  where  mild  and  pleasant  weather, 
and  a  smooth  sea,  can  always  be  expected. 

A  call  will  be  made  at  Bermuda,  which  lies  directly  in  this  route  homeward,  and 
will  be  reached  in  about  ten  days  from  Madeira,  and  after  spending  a  short  time 
with  our  friends  the  Bermudians,  the  final  departure  will  be  made  for  home,  which 
will  be  reached  in  about  three  days. 

Alreadj-,  applications  have  been  received  from  parties  in  Europe  wishing  to  join 
the  Excursion  there. 

The  ship  will  at  all  times  be  a  home,  where  the  excursionists,  if  sick,  will  be  sur 
rounded  by  kind  friends,  and  have  all  possible  comfort  and  sympathy. 

Should  contagious  sickness  exist  in  any  of  the  ports  named  in  the  programme, 
such  ports  will  be  passed,  and  others  of  interest  substituted. 

The  price  of  passage  is  fixed  at  $1,250,  currency,  for  each  adult  passenger. 
Choice  of  rooms  and  of  seats  at  the  tables  apportioned  in  the  order  in  which  pas 
sages  are  engaged,  and  no  passage  considered  engaged  until  ten  per  cent,  of  the 
passage  money  is  deposited  with  the  treasurer. 


A     SEDUCTIVE     PROGRAMME.  23 

Passengers  can  remain  on  board  of  the  steamer,  at  all  ports,  if  they  desire,  with 
out  additional  expense,  and  all  boating  at  the  expense  of  the  ship. 

All  passages  must  be  paid  for  when  taken,  in  order  that  the  most  perfect 
arrangements  be  made  for  starting  at  the  appointed  time. 

Applications  for  passage  must  be  approved  by  the  committee  before  tickets  are 
issued,  and  can  be  made  to  the  undersigned. 

Articles  of  interest  or  curiosity,  procured  by  the  passengers  during  the  voyage, 
may  be  brought  home  in  the  steamer  free  of  charge. 

Five  dollars  per  day,  in  gold,  it  is  believed,  will  be  a  fair  calculation  to  make  for 
all  traveling  expenses  on  shore,  and  at  the  various  points  where  passengers  may 
wish  to  leave  the  steamer  for  days  at  a  time. 

The  trip  can  be  extended,  and  the  route  changed,  by  unanimous  vote  of  the 
passengers. 

CHAS.  C.  DUNCAN, 

117  WALL  STREET,  NEW  YORK. 
R.  R.  G******   Treasurer. 

COMMITTEE  ON  APPLICATIONS. 
j.  T.  H*****,  ESQ.,  R.  R.  G*****   ESQ.,  C.  C.  DUNCAN. 

COMMITTEE  ON  SELECTING  STEAMER. 

CAPT.  W.  W.  S****.  Surveyor  for  Board  of  Underwriters. 
C.  W.  C*******,  Consulting  Engineer  for  U.  S.  and  Canada. 
j   T    H*****)  ESQ. 
C.  C.  DUNCAN. 

P.  S. — The  very  beautiful  and  substantial  side  wheel  steamship  "  Quaker  City " 
has  been  chartered  for  the  occasion,  and  will  leave  New  York,  June  8th.  Letters 
have  been  issued  by  the  government  commending  the  party  to  courtesies  abroad. 

What  was  there  lacking  about  that  programme,  to  make  it 
perfectly  irresistible  ?  Nothing,  that  any  finite  mind  could 
discover.  Paris,  England,  Scotland,  Switzerland,  Italy- 
Garibaldi  !  The  Grecian  archipelago !  Vesuvius  !  Constanti 
nople  !  Smyrna  !  The  Holy  Land !  Egypt  and  "  our  friends 
the  Bermudians  !"  People  in  Europe  desiring  to  join  the  Ex 
cursion — contagious  sickness  to  be  avoided — boating  at  the 
expense  of  the  ship — physician  on  board — the  circuit  of  the 
globe  to  be  made  if  the  passengers  unanimously  desired  it— 
the  company  to  be  rigidly  selected  by  a  pitiless  "  Committee 
on  Applications " — the  vessel  to  be  as  rigidly  selected  by 
as  pitiless  a  "  Committee  on  Selecting  Steamer."  Human 


24  ENROLLED     AMONG     THE 

nature  could  not  withstand  these  bewildering  temptations.  I 
hurried  to  the  Treasurer's  office  and  deposited  my  ten  per 
cent.  I  rejoiced  to  know  that  a  few  vacant  state-rooms  were 
still  left.  I  did  avoid  a  critical  personal  examination  into  my 
character,  by  that  bowelless  committee,  but  I  referred  to  all 
the  people  of  high  standing  I  could  think  of  in  the  community 
who  would  be  least  likely  to  know  any  thing  about  me. 

Shortly  a  supplementary  programme  was  issued  which  set 
forth  that  the  Plymouth  Collection  of  Hymns  would  be  used 
on  board  the  ship.  I  then  paid  the  balance  of  rny  passage 
money. 

I  was  provided  with  a  receipt,  and  duly  and  officially  ac 
cepted  as  an  excursionist.  There  was  happiness  in  that,  but 
it  was  tame  compared  to  the  novelty  of  being  "  select." 

This  supplementary  programme  also  instructed  the  excur 
sionists  to  provide  themselves  with  light  musical  instruments 
for  amusement  in  the  ship;  with  saddles  for  Syrian  travel; 
green  spectacles  and  umbrellas;  veils  for  Egypt;  and  substan 
tial  clothing  to  use  in  rough  pilgrimizing  in  the  Holy  Land. 
Furthermore,  it  was  suggested  that  although  the  ship's  library 
would  afford  a  fair  amount  of  reading  matter,  it  would  still  be 
well  if  each  passenger  would  provide  himself  with  a  few 
guide-books,  a  Bible  and  some  standard  works  of  travel.  A 
list  was  appended,  which  consisted  chiefly  of  books  relating  to 
the  Holy  Land,  since  the  Holy  Land  was  part  of  the  excursion 
and  seemed  to  be  its  main  feature. 

Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  to  have  accompanied  the 
expedition,  but  urgent  duties  obliged  him  to  give  up  the  idea. 
There  were  other  passengers  who  could  have  been  spared  bet 
ter,  and  would  have  been  spared  more  willingly.  Lieut.  Gen. 
Sherman  was  to  have  been  of  the  party,  also,  but  the  Indian 
war  compelled  his  presence  on  the  plains.  A  popular  actress 
had  entered  her  name  on  the  ship's  books,  but  something  inter 
fered,  and  she  couldn't  go.  The  "  Drummer  Boy  of  the  Poto 
mac"  deserted,  and  lo,  we  had  never  a  celebrity  left ! 

However,  we  wrere  to  have  a  "  battery  of  guns  "  from  the 
Navy  Department,  (as  per  advertisement,)  to  be  used  in 


ENROLLED     AMONG     THE     "SELECT."  25 

answering  royal  salutes ;  and  the  document  furnished  by  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy,  which  was  to  make  "  Gen.  Sherman 
and  party "  welcome  guests  in  the  courts  and  camps  of  the 
old  world,  was  still  left  to  us,  though  both  document  and  bat 
tery,  I  think,  were  shorn  of  somewhat  of  their  original  august 
proportions.  However,  had  not  we  the  seductive  programme, 
still,  with  its  Paris,  its  Constantinople,  Smyrna,  Jerusalem, 
Jericho,  and  "our  friends  the  Bermudians?"  What  did  we 
care? 


CHAPTEE   II. 

/OCCASIONALLY,  during  the  following  month,  I  dropped 
^~s  in  at  117  Wall-street  to  inquire  how  the  repairing  and 
refurnishing  of  the  vessel  was  coming  on ;  how  additions  to 
the  passenger  list  were  averaging ;  how  many  people  the  com 
mittee  were  decreeing  not  "  select,"  every  day,  and  banishing 
in  sorrow  and  tribulation.  I  was  glad  to  know  that  we 
were  to  have  a  little  printing-press  on  board  and  issue  a  daily 
newspaper  of  Our  own.  I  was  glad  to  learn  that  our  piano, 
our  parlor  organ  and  our  melodeon  were  to  be  the  best  instru 
ments  of  the  kind  that  could  be  had  in  the  market.  I  was 
proud  to  observe  that  among  our  excursionists  were  three  min 
isters  of  the  gospel,  eight  doctors,  sixteen  or  eighteen  ladies, 
several  military  and  naval  chieftains  with  sounding  titles, 
an  ample  crop  of  "  Professors  "  of  various  kinds,  and  a  gentle 
man  who  had  "  COMMISSIONER  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
TO  EUROPE,  ASIA,  AND  AFRICA"  thundering  after  his  name 
in  one  awful  blast !  I  had  carefully  prepared  myself  to  take 
rather  a  back  seat  in  that  ship,  because  of  the  uncommonly 
select  material  that  would  alone  be  permitted  to  pass  through 
the  camel's  eye  of  that  committee  on  credentials ;  I  had 
schooled  myself  to  expect  an  imposing  array  of  military  and 
naval  heroes,  and  to  have  to  set  that  back  seat  still  further 
back  in  consequence  of  it,  may  be ;  but  I  state  frankly  that  I 
was  all  unprepared  for  $.&  crusher. 

I  fell  under  that  titular  avalanche  a  torn  and  blighted  thing. 
I  said  that  if  that  potentate  raws*  go  over  in  our  ship,  why,  I 
supposed  he  must — but  that  to  my  thinking,  when  the  United 


AN     OFFICIAL     COLOSSUS.  27 

States  considered  it  necessary  to  send  a  dignitary  of  that  ton 
nage  across  the  ocean,  it  would  be  in  better  taste,  and  safer, 
to  take  him  apart  and  cart  him  over  in  sections,  in  several 
ships. 

Ah,  if  I  had  only  known,  then,  that  he  was  only  a  common 
mortal,  and  that  his  mission  had  nothing  more  overpowering 
about  it  than  the  collecting  of  seeds,  and  uncommon  yams  and 
extraordinary  cabbages  and  peculiar  bullfrogs  for  that  poor, 
useless,  innocent,  mildewed  old  fossil,  the  Smithsonian  Insti 
tute,  I  would  have  felt  so  much  relieved. 

During  that  memorable  month  I  basked  in  the  happiness  of 
being  for  once  in  my  life  drifting  with  the  tide  of  a  great 
popular  movement.  Every  body  was  going  to  Europe — I,  too, 
was  going  to  Europe.  Every  body  was  going  to  the  famous 
Paris  Exposition — I,  too,  was  going  to  the  Paris  Exposition. 
The  steamship  lines  were  carrying  Americans  out  of  the  vari 
ous  ports  of  the  country  at  the  rate  of  four  or  five  thousand  a 
week,  in  the  aggregate.  If  I  met  a  dozen  individuals,  during 
that  month,  who  were  not  going  to  Europe  shortly,  I  have  no 
distinct  remembrance  of  it  now.  I  walked  about  the  city  a 
good  deal  with  a  young  Mr.  Blucher,  wrho  was  booked  for  the 
excursion.  He  was  confiding,  good-natured,  unsophisticated, 
companionable ;  but  he  was  not  a  man  to  set  the  river  on  fire. 
He  had  the  most  extraordinary  notions  about  this  European 
exodus,  and  came  at  last  to  consider  the  whole  nation  as  pack 
ing  up  for  emigration  to  France.  "We  stepped  into  a  store  in 
Broadway,  one  day,  where  he  bought  a  handkerchief,  and  when 
the  man  could  not  make  change,  Mr.  B.  said: 

"  Never  mind,  I'll  hand  it  to  you  in  Paris." 

"  But  I  am  not  going  to  Paris." 

"How  is — what  did  I  understand  you  to  say?" 

"  I  said  I  am  not  going  to  Paris." 

"  Not  going  to  Paris  !  Not  g — well  then,  where  in  the  na 
tion  are  you  going  to  ?" 

"  Nowhere  at  all." 

"  Not  any  where  whatsoever  ? — not  any  place  on  earth  but 
this?" 


28  MR.    BLUCHER'S    OPINION. 

"  Not  any  place  at  all  but  just  this — stay  here  all  summer." 

My  comrade  took  his  purchase  and  walked  out  of  the  store 

without  a  word — walked  out  with  an  injured  look  upon  his 

countenance.     Up  the  street  apiece  he  broke  silence  and  said 

impressively:  "  It  was  a  lie — that  is  my  opinion  of  it !" 


"I'LL   PAY    YOU    IN    PAH1S." 

In  the  fullness  of  time  the  ship  was  ready  to  receive  her  pas 
sengers.  I  was  introduced  to  the  young  gentleman  who  was 
to  be  my  room  mate,  and  found  him  to  be  intelligent,  cheerful 
of  spirit,  unselfish,  full  of  generous  impulses,  patient,  consid 
erate,  and  wonderfully  good-natured.  Not  any  passenger  that 
sailed  in  the  Quaker  City  will  withhold  his  indorsement  of 
what  I  have  just  said.  We  selected  a  state-room  forward  of 


SEA-GOING     LODGINGS.  29 

the  wheel,  on  the  starboard  side,  "  below  decks."  It  had  two 
berths  in  it,  a  dismal  dead-light,  a  sink  with  a  wash-bowl  in  it, 
and  a  long,  sumptuously  cushioned  locker,  which  was  to  do 
service  as  a  sofa — partly,  and  partly  as  a  hiding-place  for  our 
things.  Notwithstanding  all  this  furniture,  there  was  still 
room  to  turn  around  in,  but  not  to  swing  a  cat  in,  at  least  with 
entire  security  to  the  cat.  However,  the  room  was  large,  for 
a  ship's  state-room,  and  was  in  every  way  satisfactory. 

The  vessel  was  appointed  to  sail  on  a  certain  Saturday  early 
in  June. 

A  little  after  noon,  on  that  distinguished  Saturday,  I  reached 
the  ship  and  went  on  board.  Al!  was  bustle  and  confusion. 
[I  have  seen  that  remark  before,  somewhere.]  The  pier  was 
crowded  with  carriages  and  men  ;•  passengers  were  arriving 
and  hurrying  on  board ;  the  vessel's  decks  were  encumbered 
with  trunks  and  valises ;  groups  of  excursionists,  arrayed  in 
unattractive  traveling  costumes,  were  moping  about  in  a  driz 
zling  rain  anr}  looking  as  droopy  and  woe-begone  as  so  many 
molting  chidkins.  The  gallant  flag  was  up.  but  it  was  under 
the  spell,  too,  and  hung  limp  and  disheartened  by  the  mast. 
Altogether,  it  was  the  bluest,  bluest  spectacle  !  It  was  a  pleas 
ure  excursion — there  was  no  gainsaying  that,  because  the 
programme  said  so^ — it  was  so  nominated  in  the  bond — but  it 
surely  hac)n't  the  general  aspect  of  one. 

Finally,  above  the  banging,  and  rumbling,  and  shouting  and 
hissing  of  steam,  rang  the  order  to  "  cast  off!" — a  sudden  rush 
to  the  gangways — a  scampering  ashore  of  visitors — a  revolu 
tion  of  the  wheels,  and  we  were  off — the  pic-nic  was  begun ! 
Two  very  mild  cheers  went  up  from  the  dripping  crowd  on  the 
pier ;  we  answered  them  gently  from  the  slippery  decks ;  the 
flag  made  an  effort  to  wave,  and  failed  ;  the  "  battery  of  guns" 
spake  not — the  ammunition  was  out. 

We  steamed  down  to  the  foot  of  the  harbor  and  came  to  an 
chor.  It  was  still  raining.  And  not  only  raining,  but  storming. 
"Outside"  we  could  see,  ourselves,  that  there  was  a  tre 
mendous  sea  on.  We  must  lie  still,  in  the  calm  harbor,  till 
the  storm  should  abate.  Our  passengers  hailed  from  fifteen 


30 


CAST     OFF. 


THE    START. 


States ;  only  a  few  of  them  had  ever  been  to  sea  before  ;  mani 
festly  it  would  not  do  to  -pit  them  against  a  full-blown  tempest 
until  they  had  got  their  sea-legs  on.  Toward  evening  the  two 
steam-tugs  that  had  accompanied  us  with  a  rollicking  cham 
pagne-party  of  young  New  Yorkers  on  board  who  wished 
to  bid  farewell  to  one  of  our  number  in  due  and  ancient 
form,  departed,  and  we  were  alone  on  the  deep.  On  deep 
five  fathoms,  and  anchored  fast  to  the  bottom.  And  out  in 
the  solemn  rain,  at  that.  This  was  pleasuring  with  a  ven 
geance. 

It  was  an  appropriate  relief  when  the  gong  sounded  for 
prayer  meeting.  The  first  Saturday  night  of  any  other  pleas 
ure  excursion  might  have  been  devoted  to  whist  and  dan 
cing  ;  but  I  submit  it  to  the  unprejudiced  mind  if  it  would 
have  been  in  good  taste  for  us  to  engage  in  such  frivolities, 
considering  what  we  had  gone  through  and  the  frame  of  mind 


"CAST     OFF."  31 

we  were  in.     "We  would  have  shone  at  a  wake,  but  not  at 
any  thing  more  festive. 

However,  there  is  always  a  cheering  influence  about  the 
sea ;  and  in  my  berth,  that  night,  rocked  by  the  measured 
swell  of  the  waves,  and  lulled  by  the  murmur  of  the  distant 
surf,  I  soon  passed  tranquilly  out  of  all  consciousness  of  the 
dreary  experiences  of  the  day  and  damaging  premonitions  of 
the  future. 


CHAPTER   III. 

ALL  day  Sunday  at  anchor.  The  storm  had  gone  down  a 
great  deal,  but  the  sea  had  not.  It  was  still  piling  its 
frothy  hills  high  in  air  "  outside,"  as  we  could  plainly  see  with 
the  glasses.  We  could  not  properly  begin  a  pleasure  excur 
sion  on  Sunday;  we  could  not  offer  untried  stomachs  to  so 
pitiless  a  sea  as  that.  We  must  lie  still  till  Monday.  And 
we  did.  But  we  had  repetitions  of  church  and  prayer-meet 
ings  ;  and  so,  of  course,  we  were  just  as  eligibly  situated  as  we 
could  have  been  any  where. 

I  was  up  early  that  Sabbath  morning,  and  was  early  to 
breakfast.  I  felt  a  perfectly  natural  desire  to  have  a  good, 
long,  unprejudiced  look  at  the  passengers,  at  a  time  when  they 
should  be  free 'from  self-consciousness — which  is  at  breakfast, 
when  such  a  moment  occurs  in  the  lives  of  human  beings  at 
all. 

I  was  greatly  surprised  to  see  so  many  elderly  people — I 
might  almost  say,  so  many  venerable  people.  A  glance  at  the 
long  lines  of  heads  was  apt  to  make  one  think  it  was  all  gray. 
But  it  was  not.  There  was  a  tolerably  fair  sprinkling  -of 
young  folks,  and  another  fair  sprinkling  of  gentlemen  and 
ladies  who  were  non-committal  as  to  age,  being  neither  actu 
ally  old  or  absolutely  young. 

The  next  morning,  we  weighed  anchor  and  went  to  sea.  It 
was  a  great  happiness  to  get  away,  after  this  dragging, 
dispiriting  delay.  I  thought  there  never  was  such  gladness  in 
the  air  before,  such  brightness  in  the  sun,  such  beauty  in  the 


UNDER     WAY     "FOR     GOOD."  33 

sea.  I  was  satisfied  with  the  picnic,  then,  and  with  all  its 
belongings.  All  my  malicious  instincts  were  dead  within  me  ; 
and  as  America  faded  out  of  sight,  I  think  a  spirit  of  charity 
rose  up  in  their  place  that  was  as  boundless,  for  the  time  being, 
as  the  broad  ocean  that  was  heaving  its  billows  about  us.  I 
wished  to  express  my  feelings — I  wished  to  lift  up  my  voice 
and  sing ;  but  I  did  not  know  any  thing  to  sing,  and  so  I  was 
obliged  to  give  up  the  idea.  It  was  no  loss  to  the  ship  though, 
perhaps. 

It  was  breezy  and  pleasant,  but  the  sea  was  still  very  rough. 
One  could  not  promenade  without  risking  his  neck ;  at  one 
moment  the  bowsprit  was  taking  a  deadly  aim  at  the  sun  in 
mid-heaven,  and  at  the  next  it  was  trying  to  harpoon  a  shark 
in  the  bottom  of  the  ocean.  What  a  weird  sensation  it  is  to 
feel  the  stern  of  a  ship  sinking  swiftly  from  under  you  and  see 
the  bow  climbing  high  away  among  the  clouds  !  One's  safest 
course,  that  day,  was  to  clasp  a  railing  and  hang  on  ;  walking 
was  too  precarious  a  pastime. 

By  some  happy  fortune  I  was  not  seasick. — That  was  a 
thing  to  be  proud  of.  I  had  not  always  escaped  before.  If 
there  is  one  thing  in  the  world  that  will  make  a  man  pecu 
liarly  and  insufferably  self-conceited,  it  is  to  have  his  stomach 
behave  itself,  the  first  day  at  sea,  when  nearly  all  his  comrades 
are  seasick.  Soon,  a  venerable  fossil,  shawled  to  the  chin  and 
bandaged  like  a  mummy,  appeared  at  the  door  of  the  after 
deck-house,  and  the  next  lurch  of  the  ship  shot  him  into  my 
arms.  I  said : 

"  Good-morning,  Sir.     It  is  a  fine  day." 

He  put  his  hand  on  his  stomach  and  said,  "  Oh,  my !" 
and  then  staggered  away  and  fell  over  the  coop  of  a  sky 
light. 

Presently  another  old  gentleman  was  projected  from  the 
same  door,  with  great  violence.  I  said : 

"  Calm  yourself,  Sir — There  is  no  hurry.  It  is  a  fine  day, 
Sir." 

He,  also,  put  his  hand  on  his  stomach  and  said  "  Oh,  my  !" 
and  reeled  away. 

3 


34:         TRIBULATION     AMONG     THE     PATRIARCHS. 

In  a  little  while  another  veteran  was  discharged  abruptly 
from  the  same  door,  clawing  at  the  air  for  a  saving  support. 
I  said : 

"  Good-morning,  Sir.  It  is  a  fine  day  for  pleasuring.  You 
were  about  to  say — " 


"  GOOD  MOKX1XG,    SIR. 

"Oh,  my!" 

I  thought  so.  I  anticipated  him,  any  how.  I  staid  there 
and  was  bombarded  with  old  gentlemen  for  an  hour  perhaps ; 
and  all  I  got  out  of  any  of  them  was  "  Oh,  my !" 

I  went  away,  then,  in  a  thoughtful  mood.  I  said,  this  is  a 
good  pleasure  excursion.  I  like  it.  The  passengers  are  not 
garrulous,  but  still  they  are  sociable.  I  like  those  old  people, 


TRANSGRESSING     THE     LAWS.  35 

but  somehow  they  all  seem  to  have  the  "  Oh,  my "  rather 
bad. 

I  knew  what  was  the  matter  with  them.  They  were  sea 
sick.  And  I  was  glad  of  it.  "We  all  like  to  see  people  sea 
sick  when  we  are  not,  ourselves.  Playing  whist  'by  the  cabin 
lamps  when  it  is  storming  outside,  is  pleasant ;  walking  the 
quarter-deck  in  the  moonlight,  is  pleasant ;  smoking  in  the 
breezy  foretop  is  pleasant,  when  one  is  not  afraid  to  go  up 
there ;  but  these  are  all  feeble  and  commonplace  compared  with 
the  joy  of  seeing  people  suffering  the  miseries  of  seasickness. 

I  picked  up  a  good  deal  of  information  during  the  after 
noon.  At  one  time  I  was  climbing  up  the  quarter-deck  when 
the  vessel's  stern  was  in  the  sky ;  I  was  smoking  a  cigar  and 
feeling  passably  comfortable.  Somebody  ejaculated  : 

"  Come,  now,  that  won't  answer.     Read  the  sign  up  there — 

No    SMOKING   ABAFT   THE   WHEEL!" 

It  was  Capt.  Duncan,  chief  of  the  expedition.  I  went  for 
ward,  of  course.  I  saw  a  long  spy-glass  lying  on  a  desk  in  one 
of  the  upper-deck  state-rooms  back  of  the  pilot-house,  and 
reached  after  it — there  was  a  ship  in  the  distance : 

"  Ah,  ah— hands  off!     Come  out  of  that !" 

I  came  out  of  that.  I  said  to  a  deck-sweep — but  in  a  low 
voice  : 

"  Who  is  that  overgrown  pirate  with  the  whiskers  and  the 
discordant  voice  ?" 

"  It's  Capt.  Bursley — executive  officer — sailing-master." 

I  loitered  about  awhile,  and  then,  for  want  of  something 
better  to  do,  fell  to  carving  a  railing  with  my  knife.  Some 
body  said,  in  an  insinuating,  admonitory  voice : 

"Now  say — my  friend — don't  you  know  any  better  than 
to  be  whittling  the  ship  all  to  pieces  that  way  ?  You  ought  to 
know  better  than  that." 

I  went  back  and  found  the  deck-sweep : 

"  Who  is  that  smooth-faced  animated  outrage  yonder  in  the 
fine  clothes?" 

"  That's  Capt.  L****,  the  owner  of  the  ship— he's  one  of 
the  main  bosses." 


36  TRANSGRESSING     THE     LAWS. 

In  the  course  of  time  I  brought  up  on  the  starboard  side  of 
the  pilot-house,  and  found  a  sextant  lying  on  a  bench.  Now, 
I  said,  they  "  take  the  sun "  through  this  thing ;  I  should 
think  I  might  see  that  vessel  through  it.  I  had  hardly  got  it 
to  my  eye  when  some  one  touched  me  on  the  shoulder  and 
said,  deprecatingly : 

"  I'll  have  to  get  you  to  give  that  to  me,  Sir.    If  there's  any 


THE   OLD   PIRATE. 


thing  you'd  like  to  know  about  taking  the  sun,  I'd  as  soon 
tell  you  as  not — but  I  don't  like  to  trust  any  body  with 
that  instrument.  If  you  want  any  figuring  done —  Aye- 
aye,  Sir!" 

He  was  gone,  to  answer  a  call  from  the  other  side.  I 
sought  the  deck-sweep : 

"  Who  is  that  spider-legged  gorilla  yonder  with  the  sancti 
monious  countenance?" 

"It's  Capt.  Jones,  Sir— the  chief  mate." 


TRANSGRESSING     THE     LAWS.  37 

"  Well.  This  goes  clear  away  ahead  of  any  thing  I  ever 
heard  of  before.  Do  you — now  I  ask  you  as  a  man  and  a 
brother — do  you  think  I  could  venture  to  throw  a  rock  here 
in  any  given  direction  without  hitting  a  captain  of  this  ship  ?" 

"  Well,  Sir,  I  don't  know — I  think  likely  you'd  fetch  the 
captain  of  the  watch,  may  be,  because  he's  a-standing  right 
yonder  in  the  way." 

I  went  below — meditating,  and  a  little  down-hearted.  I 
thought,  if  five  cooks  can  spoil  a  broth,  what  may  not  five  cap 
tains  do  with  a  pleasure  excursion. 


OHAPTEE   IV. 


w 


"E  plowed  along  bravely  for  a  week  or  more,  and  with 
out  any  conflict  of  jurisdiction  among  the  captains 
worth  mentioning.  The  passengers  soon  learned  to  accommo 
date  themselves  to  their  new  circumstances,  and  life  in  the 
ship  became  nearly  as  systematically  monotonous  as  the 
routine  of  a  barrack.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  was  dull,  for  it 
was  not  entirely  so  by  any  means — but  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  sameness  about  it.  As  is  always  the  fashion  at  sea,  the 
passengers  shortly  began  to  pick  up  sailor  terms — a  sign  that 
they  were  beginning  to  feel  at  home.  Half-past  six  was  no 
longer  half-past  six  to  these  pilgrims  from  New  England,  the 
South,  and  the  Mississippi  Yalley,  it  was  "  seven  bells ;"  eight, 
twelve  and  four  o'clock  were  "  eight  bells ;"  the  captain  did 
not  take  the  longitude  at  nine  o'clock,  but  at  "  two  bells." 
They  spoke  glibly  of  the  "  after  cabin,"  the  "  for'rard  cabin," 
"  port  and  starboard  "  and  the  "  fo'castle." 

At  seven  bells  the  first  gong  rang ;  at  eight  there  was  break 
fast,  for  such  as  were  not  too  seasick  to  eat  it.  After  that  all 
the  well  people  walked  arm-in-arm  up  and  down  the  long 
promenade  deck,  enjoying  the  fine  summer  mornings,  and  the 
seasick  ones  crawled  out  and  propped  themselves  up  in  the 
lee  of  the  paddle-boxes  and  ate  their  dismal  tea  and  toast,  and 
looked  wretched.  From  eleven  o'clock  until  luncheon,  and 
from  luncheon  until  dinner  at  six  in  the  evening,  the  employ 
ments  and  amusements  were  various.  Some  reading  was 
done ;  and  much  smoking  and  sewing,  though  not  by  the  same 
parties ;  there  were  the  monsters  of  the  deep  to  be  looked  after 


PILGRIM     LIFE     AT     SEA.  39 

and  wondered  at ;  strange  ships  had  to  be  scrutinized  through 
opera-glasses,  and  sage  decisions  arrived  at  concerning  them ; 
and  more  than  that,  every  body  took  a  personal  interest  in  see 
ing  that  the  flag  was  run  up  and  politely  dipped  three  times  in 
response  to  the  salutes  of  those  strangers;  in  the  smoking- 
room  there  were  always  parties  of  gentlemen  playing  euchre, 
draughts  and  dominoes,  especially  dominoes,  that  delightfully 
harmless  game;  and  down  on  the  main  deck,  "for'rard"- 
for'rard  of  the  chicken-coops  and  the  cattle — we  had  what  was 
called  "  horse-billiards."  Horse-billiards  is  a  fine  game.  It 
affords  good,  active  exercise,  hilarity,  and  consuming  excitement. 
It  is  a  mixture  of  "  hop-scotch  "  and  shuffle-board  played  with  a 
crutch.  A  large  hop-scotch  diagram  is  marked  out  on  the  deck 
with  chalk,  and  each  compartment  numbered.  You  stand  off 
three  or  four  steps,  with  some  broad  wooden  disks  before  you  on 
the  deck,  and  these  you  send  forward  with  a  vigorous  thrust  of 
a  long  crutch.  If  a  disk  stops  on  a  chalk  line,  it  does  not  count 
any  thing.  If  it  stops  in  division  No.  7,  it  counts  7 ;  in  5,  it 
counts  5,  and  so  on.  The  game  is  100,  and  four  can  play  at  a 
time.  That  game  would  be  very  simple,  played  on  a  sta 
tionary  floor,  but  with  us,  to  play  it  well  required  science. 
We  had  to  allow  for  the  reeling  of  the  ship  to  the  right  or  the 
left.  Yery  often  one  made  calculations  for  a  heel  to  the  right 
and  the  ship  did  not  go  that  way.  The  consequence  was  that 
that  disk  missed  the  whole  hop-scotch  plan  a  yard  or  two,  and 
then  there  was  humiliation  on  one  side  and  laughter  on  the  other. 

When  it  rained,  the  passengers  had  to  stay  in  the  house,  of 
course — or  at  least  the  cabins — and  amuse  themselves  with 
games,  reading,  looking  out  of  the  windows  at  the  very  famil 
iar  billows,  and  talking  gossip. 

By  7  o'clock  in  the  evening,  dinner  was  about  over ;  an 
hour's  promenade  on  the  upper  deck  followed  ;  then  the  gong 
sounded  and  a  large  majority  of  the  party  repaired  to  the  after 
cabin  (upper)  a  handsome  saloon  fifty  or  sixty  feet  long,  for 
prayers.  The  unregenerated  called  this  saloon  the  "  Syna 
gogue."  The  devotions  consisted  only  of  two  hymns  from 
the  "Plymouth  Collection,"  and  a  short  prayer,  and  seldom 


40  THE 

occupied  more  than  fifteen  minutes.  The  hymns  were  accom 
panied  by  parlor  organ  music  when  the  sea  was  smooth  enough 
to  allow  a  performer  to  sit  at  the  instrument  without  being 
lashed  to  his  chair. 

After  prayers  the  Synagogue  shortly  took  the  semblance  of 
a  writing-school.  The  like  of  that  picture  was  never  seen  in 
a  ship  before.  Behind  the  long  dining-tables  on  either  side  of 
the  saloon,  and  scattered  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  latter, 
some  twenty  or  thirty  gentlemen  and  ladies  sat  them  down 
under  the  swaying  lamps,  and  for  two  or  three  hours  wrote 
diligently  in  their  journals.  Alas !  that  journals  so  volumi 
nously  begun  should  come  to  so  lame  and  impotent  a  conclu 
sion  as  most  of  them  did !  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  single  pilgrim 
of  all  that  host  but  can  show  a  hundred  fair  pages  of  journal 
concerning  the  first  twenty  days'  voyaging  in  the  Quaker  City ; 
and  I  am  morally  certain  that  not  ten  of  the  party  can  show 
twenty  pages  of  journal  for  the  succeeding  twenty  thousand 
miles  of  voyaging !  At  certain  periods  it  becomes  the  dearest 
ambition  of  a  man  to  keep  a  faithful  record  of  his  performances 
in  a  book ;  and  he  dashes  at  this  work  with  an  enthusiasm 
that  imposes  on  him  the  notion  that  keeping  a  journal  is  the 
veriest  pastime  in  the  world,  and  the  pleasantest.  But  if  he 
only  lives  twenty-one  days,  he  will  find  out  that  only  those 
rare  natures  that  are  made  up  of  pluck,  endurance,  devotion 
to  duty  for  duty's  sake,  and  invincible  determination,  may  hope 
to  venture  upon  so  tremendous  an  enterprise  as  the  keeping  of 
a  journal  and  not  sustain  a  shameful  defeat. 

One  of  our  favorite  youths,  Jack,  a  splendid  young  fellow 
with  a  head  full  of  good  sense,  and  a  pair  of  legs  that  were  a 
wonder  to  look  upon  in  the  way  of  length,  and  straightness, 
and  slimness,  used  to  report  progress  every  morning  in  the 
most  glowing  and  spirited  way,  and  say : 

"  Oh,  I'm  coming  along  bully !"  (he  was  a  little  given  to 
slang,  in  his  happier  moods,)  "  I  wrote  ten  pages  in  my  journal 
last  night — and  you  know  I  wrote  nine  the  night  before,  and 
twelve  the  night  before  that.  Why  it's  only  fun !" 

"  What  do  you  find  to  put  in  it,  Jack  f ' 


JACK'S    "JOURNAL."  41 

"  Oh,  every  thing.  Latitude  and  longitude,  noon  every  day ; 
and  how  many  miles  we  made  last  twenty-four  hours ;  and  all 
the  domino-games  I  beat,  and  horse-billiards ;  and  whales  and 
sharks  and  porpoises ;  and  the  text  of  the  sermon,  Sundays ; 
(because  that'll  tell  at  home,  you  know,)  and  the  ships  we  sa 
luted  and  what  nation  they  were ;  and  which  way  the  wind 
was,  and  whether  there  was  a  heavy  sea,  and  what  sail  we 
carried,  though  we  don't  ever  carry  any,  principally,  going 
against  a  head  wind  always — wonder  what  is  the  reason  of 
that  ? — and  how  many  lies  Moult  has  told — Oh,  every  thing ! 
I've  got  every  thing  down.  My  father  told  me  to  keep  that 
journal.  Father  wouldn't  take  a  thousand  dollars  for  it  when 
I  get  it  done." 

"  No,  Jack  ;  it  will  be  worth  more  than  a  thousand  dollars — 
when  you  get  it  done." 

u  Do  you  ? — no,  but  do  you  think  it  will,  though  ?" 

"  Yes,  it  will  be  worth  at  least  as  much  as  a  thousand  dol 
lars — when  you  get  it  done.  May  be,  more." 

"  Well,  I  about  half  think  so,  myself.  It  ain't  no  slouch  of  a 
journal." 

But  it  shortly  became  a  most  lamentable  "  slouch  of  a  jour 
nal."  One  night  in  Paris,  after  a  hard  day's  toil  in  sight 
seeing,  I  said : 

"  Now  I'll  go  and  stroll  around  the  cafe's  awhile,  Jack,  and 
give  you  a  chance  to  write  up  your  journal,  old  fellow." 

His  countenance  lost  its  fire.     He  said : 

"  Well,  no,  you  needn't  mind.  I  think  I  won't  run  that 
journal  any  more.  It  is  awful  tedious.  Do  you  know — I 
reckon  I'm  as  much  as  four  thousand  pages  behind  hand.  I 
haven't  got  any  France  in  it  at  all.  First  I  thought  I'd  leave 
France  out  and  start  fresh.  But  that  wouldn't  do,  would  it  ? 
The  governor  would  say,  '  Hello,  here — didn't  see  any  thing  in 
France  rC  That  cat  wouldn't  fight,  you  know.  First  I  thought 
I'd  copy  France  out  of  the  guide-book,  like  old  Badger  in  the 
for'rard  cabin  who's  writing  a  book,  but  there's  more  than  three 
hundred  pages  of  it.  Oh,  /don't  think  a  journal's  any  use — 
do  you  ?  They're  only  a  bother,  ain't  they  ?" 


42 


THE     Q.     C.     CLUB. 


u  Yes,  a  journal  that  is  incomplete  isn't  of  much  use,  but  a 
journal  properly  kept,  is  worth  a  thousand  dollars, — when 
you've  got  it  done." 

"A  thousand! — well  I  should  think  so.  /wouldn't  finish 
it  for  a  million." 

His  experience  was  only  the  experience  of  the  majority  of 


DANCING   UNDER  DIFFICULTIES. 

that  industrious  night-school  in  the  cabin.  If  you  wish  to 
inflict  a  heartless  and  malignant  punishment  upon  a  young 
person,  pledge  him  to  keep  a  journal  a  year. 

A  good  many  expedients  were  resorted  to  to  keep  the  excur 
sionists  amused  and  satisfied.  A  club  was  formed,  of  all  the 
passengers,  wrhich  met  in  the  writing-school  after  prayers  and 


DANCING     UNDER    DIFFICULTIES.  43 

read  aloud  about  the  countries  we  were  approaching,  and  dis 
cussed  the  information  so  obtained. 

Several  times  the  photographer  of  the  expedition  brought 
out  his  transparent  pictures  and  gave  us  a  handsome  magic 
lantern  exhibition.  His  views  were  nearly  all  of  foreign 
scenes,  but  there  were  one  or  two  home  pictures  among  them. 
He  advertised  that  he  would  "  open  his  performance  in  the 
after  cabin  at  '  two  bells,'  (9,  p.  m.,)  and  show  the  passengers 
where  they  shall  eventually  arrive  " — which  was  all  very  well, 
but  by  a  funny  accident  the  first  picture  that  flamed  out  upon 
the  canvas  was  a  view  of  Greenwood  Cemetery ! 

On  several  starlight  nights  we  danced  on  the  upper  deck, 
under  the  awnings,  and  made  something  of  a  ball-room  display 
of  brilliancy  by  hanging  a  number  of  ship's  lanterns  to  the 
stanchions.  Our  music  consisted  of  the  well-mixed  strains 
of  a  melodeon  which  was  a  little  asthmatic  and  apt  to  catch 
its  breath  where  it  ought  to  come  out  strong ;  a  clarinet  which 
was  a  little  unreliable  on  the  high  keys  and  rather  melancholy 
on  the  low  ones ;  and  a  disreputable  accordion  that  had  a  leak 
somewhere  and  breathed  louder  than  it  squawked — a  more  ele 
gant  term  does  not  occur  to  me  just  now.  However,  the 
dancing  was  infinitely  worse  than  the  music.  When  the  ship 
rolled  to  starboard  the  whole  platoon  of  dancers  came  charging 
down  to  starboard  with  it,  and  brought  up  in  mass  at  the  rail ; 
and  when  it  rolled  to  port,  they  went  floundering  down  to 
port  with  the  same  unanimity  of  sentiment.  Waltzers  spun 
around  precariously  for  a  matter  of  fifteen  seconds  and  then 
went  skurrying  down  to  the  rail  as  if  they  meant  to  go  over 
board.  The  Virginia  reel,  as  performed  on  board  the  Quaker 
City,  had  more  genuine  reel  about  it  than  any  reel  I  ever  saw 
before,  and  was  as  full  of  interest  to  the  spectator  as  it  was 
full  of  desperate  chances  and  hairbreadth  escapes  to  the  partici 
pant.  "We  gave  up  dancing,  finally. 

We  celebrated  a  lady's  birthday  anniversary,  with  toasts, 
speeches,  a  poem,  and  so  forth.  We  also  had  a  mock  trial. 
No  ship  ever  went  to  sea  that  hadn't  a  mock  trial  on  board. 
The  purser  was  accused  of  stealing  an  overcoat  from  state-room 


44  THE     MOCK     TRIAL. 

No.  10.  A  judge  was  appointed ;  also  clerks,  a  crier  of  the 
court,  constables,  sheriffs ;  counsel  for  the  State  and  for  the 
defendant ;  witnesses  were  subpoenaed,  and  a  jury  empaneled 
after  much  challenging.  The  witnesses  were  stupid,  and  un 
reliable  and  contradictory,  as  witnesses  always  are.  The 
counsel  were  eloquent,  argumentative  and  vindictively  abusive 
of  each  other,  as  was  characteristic  and  proper.  The  case  was 


HOCK   TRIAL. 


at  last  submitted,  and  duly  finished  by  the  judge  with  an 
absurd  decision  and  a  ridiculous  sentence. 

The  acting  of  charades  was  tried,  on  several  evenings,  by 
the  young  gentlemen  and  ladies,  in  the  cabins,  and  proved  the 
most  distinguished  success  of  all  the  amusement  experi 
ments. 

An  attempt  was  made  to  organize  a  debating  club,  but  it 
was  a  failure.  There  was  no  oratorical  talent  in  the  ship. 

"We  all  enjoyed  ourselves — I  ttiink  I  can  safely  say  that,  but 


PILGRIM     SOLEMNITY.  45 

it  was  in  a  rather  quiet  way.  "We  very,  very  seldom  played 
the  piano  ;  we  played  the  flute  and  the  clarinet  together,  and 
made  good  music,  too,  what  there  was  of  it,  but  we  always 
played  the  same  old  tune  ;  it  was  a  very  pretty  tune — how  well 
I  remember  it — I  wonder  when  I  shall  ever  get  rid  of  it.  We 
never  played  either  the  melodeon  or  the  organ,  except  at  devo 
tions — but  I  am  too  fast :  young  Albert  did  know  part  of  a 
tune — something  about  "  O  Something-Or-Other  How  Sweet 
it  is  to  Know  that  he's  his  What's-his-Name,"  (I  do  not  re 
member  the  exact  title  of  it,  but  it  was  very  plaintive,  and  full  of 
sentiment ;)  Albert  played  that  pretty  much  all  the  time,  until 
we  contracted  with  him  to  restrain  himself.  But  nobody  ever 
sang  by  moonlight  on  the  upper  deck,  and  the  congregational 
singing  at  church  and  prayers  was  not  of  a  superior  order  of 
architecture.  I  put  up  with  it  as  long  as  I  could,  and  then  joined 
in  and  tried  to  improve  it,  but  this  encouraged  young  George 
to  join  in  too,  and  that  made  a  failure  of  it ;  because  George's 
voice  was  just  "  turning,"  and  when  he  was  singing  a  dismal 
sort  of  base,  it  was  apt  to  fly  off  the  handle  and  startle  every 
body  with  a  most  discordant  cackle  on  the  upper  notes.  George 
didn't  know  the  tunes,  either,  which  was  also  a  drawback  to 
his  performances.  I  said  : 

"  Come,  now,  George,  don't  improvise.  It  looks  too  egotis 
tical.  It  will  provoke  remark.  Just  stick  to  '  Coronation,' 
like  the  others.  It  is  a  good  tune — you  can't  improve  it  any, 
just  off-hand,  in  this  way." 

"  Why  I'm  not  trying  to  improve  it — and  I  am  singing  like 
the  others — just  as  it  is  in  the  notes." 

And  he  honestly  thought  he  was,  too ;  and  so  he  had  no  one 
to  blame  but  himself  when  his  voice  caught  on  the  centre  occa 
sionally,  and  gave  him  the  lockjaw. 

There  were  those  among  the  unregenerated  who  attributed 
the  unceasing  head- winds  to  our  distressing  choir-music.  There 
were  those  who  said  openly  that  it  was  taking  chances  enough 
to  have  such  ghastly  music  going  on,  even  when  it  was  at  its 
best ;  and  that  to  exaggerate  the  crime  by  letting  George  help, 
was  simply  flying  in  the  face  of  Providence.  These  said  that 


46  GRUMBLERS. 

the  choir  would  keep  tip  their  lacerating  attempts  at  melody 
until  they  would  bring  down  a  storm  some  day  that  would  sink 
the  ship. 

There  were  even  grumblers  at  the  prayers.  The  executive 
officer  said  the  Pilgrims  had  no  charity : 

"There  they  are,  down  there  every  night  at  eight  bells, 
praying  for  fair  winds — when  they  know  as  well  as  I  do  that 
this  is  the  only  ship  going  east  this  time  of  the  year,  but  there's 
a  thousand  coming  west — what's  a  fair  wind  for  us  is  a  head 
wind  to  them — the  Almighty's  blowing  a  fair  wind  for  a  thou 
sand  vessels,  and  this  tribe  wants  him  to  turn  it  clear  around 
so  as  to  accommodate  one, — and  she  a  steamship  at  that !  It 
ain't  good  sense,  it  ain't  good  reason,  it  ain't  good  Christianity, 
it  ain't  common  human  charity.  Avast  with  such  nonsense !" 


CHAPTEE  Y. 

TAKING  it  "  by  and  large,"  as  the  sailors  say,  we  had  a 
pleasant  ten  days'  run  from  New  York  to  the  Azores 
islands — not  a  fast  run,  for  the  distance  is  only  twenty-four 
hundred  miles — but  a  right  pleasant  one,  in  the  main.  True, 
we  had  head-winds  all  the  time,  and  several  stormy  experi 
ences  which  sent  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  passengers  to  bed,  sick, 
and  made  the  ship  look  dismal  and  deserted — stormy  experi 
ences  that  all  will  remember  who  weathered  them  on  the 
tumbling  deck,  and  caught  the  vast  sheets  of  spray  that 
every  now  and  then  sprang  high  in  air  from  the  weather 
bow  and  swept  the  ship  like  a  thunder-shower;  but  for  the 
most  part  we  had  balmy  summer  weather,  and  nights  that 
were  even  finer  than  the  days.  We  had  the  phenomenon 
of  a  full  moon  located  just  in  the  same  spot  in  the  heavens  at 
the  same  hour  every  night.  The  reason  of  this  singular  con 
duct  on  the  part  of  the  moon  did  not  occur  to  us  at  first,  but  it 
did  afterward  when  we  reflected  that  we  were  gaining  about 
twenty  minutes  every  day,  because  we  were  going  east  so  fast 
—we  gained  just  about  enough  every  day  to  keep  along  with 
the  moon.  It  was  becoming  an  old  moon  to  the  friends  we  had 
left  behind  us,  but  to  us  Joshuas  it  stood  still  in  the  same 
place,  and  remained  always  the  same. 

Young  Mr.  Blucher,  who  is  from  the  Far  West,  and  is  on 
his  first  voyage,  was  a  good  deal  worried  by  the  constantly 
changing  "  ship-time."  He  was  proud  of  his  new  watch  at 
first,  and  used  to  drag  it  out  promptly  when  eight  bells  struck 
at  noon,  but  he  came  to  look  after  a  while  as  if  he  were  losing 


48  BLUCHER     IN     TROUBLE. 

confidence  in  it.  Seven  days  out  from  'New  York  he  came  on 
deck,  and  said  with  great  decision : 

"  This  thing's  a  swindle !" 

"What's  a  swindle?" 

"  Why,  this  watch.  I  bought  her  out  in  Illinois — gave  $150 
for  her — and  I  thought  she  was  good.  And,  by  George,  she  is 
good  on  shore,  but  somehow  she  don't  keep  up  her  lick  here 
on  the  water — gets  seasick,  may  be.  She  skips ;  she  runs  along 
regular  enough  till  half-past  eleven,  and  then,  all  of  a  sudden, 
she  lets  down.  I've  set  that  old  regulator  up  faster  and  faster, 
till  I've  shoved  it  clear  around,  but  it  don't  do  any  good ;  she 
just  distances  every  watch  in  the  ship,  and  clatters  along  in  a 
way  that's  astonishing  till  it  is  noon,  but  them  eight  bells  al 
ways  gets  in  about  ten  minutes  ahead  of  her  any  way.  I  don't 
know  what  to  do  with  her  now.  She's  doing  all  she  can- 
she's  going  her  best  gait,  but  it  won't  save  her.  Now,  don't 
you  know,  there  ain't  a  watch  in  the  ship  that's  making  better 
time  than  she  is :  but  what  does  it  signify  ?  When  you  hear 
them  eight  bells  you'll  find  her  just  about  ten  mimites  short  of 
her  score,  sure." 

The  ship  was  gaining  a  full  hour  every  three  days,  and  this 
fellow  was  trying  to  make  his  watch  go  fast  enough  to  keep  up 
to  her.  But,  as  he  had  said,  he  had  pushed  the  regulator  up 
as  far  as  it  would  go,  and  the  watch  was  "  on  its  best  gait," 
and  so  nothing  was  left  him  but  to  fold  his  hands  and  see  the 
ship  beat  the  race.  We  sent  him  to  the  captain,  and  he  ex 
plained  to  him  the  mystery  of  "  ship-time,"  and  set  his  troubled 
mind  at  rest.  This  young  man  asked  a  great  many  questions 
about  seasickness  before  we  left,  and  wanted  to  know  what  its 
characteristics  were,  and  how  he  was  to  tell  when  he  had  it 
He  found  out. 

We  saw  the  usual  sharks,  blackfish,  porpoises,  &c.,  of  course, 
and  by  and  by  large  schools  of  Portuguese  men-of-war  were 
added  to  the  regular  list  of  sea  wonders.  Some  of  them  were 
white  and  some  of  a  brilliant  carmine  color.  The  nautilus  is 
nothing  but  a  transparent  web  of  jelly,  that  spreads  itself  to 
catch  the  wind,  and  has  fleshy-looking  strings  a  foot  or  two. 


"LAND,     HO!"  49 

long  dangling  from  it  to  keep  it  steady  in  the  water.  It  is  an 
accomplished  sailor,  and  has  good  sailor  judgment.  It  reefs  its 
sail  when  a  storm  threatens  or  the  wind  blows  pretty  hard,  and 
furls  it  entirely  and  goes  down  when  a  gale  blows.  Ordinarily 
it  keeps  its  sail  wet  and  in  good  sailing  order  by  turning  over 
and  dipping  it  in  the  water  for  a  moment.  Seamen  say  the 
nautilus  is  only  found  in  these  waters  between  the  35th  and 
45th  parallels  of  latitude. 


"LAND,  no! 


At  three  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  21st  of  June,  we 
were  awakened  and  notified  that  the  Azores  islands  were  in 
sight.  I  said  I  did  not  take  any  interest  in  islands  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  But  another  persecutor  came,  and 
then  another  and  another,  and  finally  believing  that  the  general 
enthusiasm  would  permit  no  one  to  slumber  in  peace,  I  got  up 
and  went  sleepily  on  deck.  It  was  five  and  a  half  o'clock  now, 
and  a  raw,  blustering  morning.  The  passengers  were  huddled 
about  the  smoke-stacks  and  fortified  behind  ventilators,  and  all 
were  wrapped  in  wintry  costumes,  and  looking  sleepy  and  un 
happy  in  the  pitiless  gale  and  the  drenching  spray. 

4 


50  "FLORES. — FAYAL!" 

Tlie  island  in  sight  was  Flores.  It  seemed  only  a  mountain 
of  mud  standing  up  out  of  the  dull  mists  of  the  sea.  But  as 
we  bore  down  upon  it,  the  sun  came  out  and  made  it  a  beau 
tiful  picture — a  mass  of  green  farms  and  meadows  that  swelled 
up  to  a  height  of  fifteen  hundred  feet,  and  mingled  its  upper 
outlines  with  the  clouds.  It  was  ribbed  with  sharp,  steep 
ridges,  and  cloven  with  narrow  canons,  and  here  and  there  on 
the  heights,  rocky  upheavals  shaped  themselves  into  mimic  bat 
tlements  and  castles ;  and  out  of  rifted  clouds  came  broad  shafts 
of  sunlight,  that  painted  summit,  and  slope,  and  glen,  with 
bands  of  fire,  and  left  belts  of  sombre  shade  between.  It  was 
the  aurora  borealis  of  the  frozen  pole  exiled  to  a  summer  land ! 

We  skirted  around  two-thirds  of  the  island,  four  miles  from 
shore,  and  all  the  opera-glasses  in  the  ship  were  called  into 
requisition  to  settle  disputes  as  to  whether  mossy  spots  on  the 
uplands  were  groves  of  trees  or  groves  of  weeds,  or  whether 
the  white  villages  down  by  the  sea  were  really  villages  or  only 
the  clustering  tombstones  of  cemeteries.  Finally,  we  stood  to 
sea  and  bore  away  for  San  Miguel,  and  Flores  shortly  became 
a  dome  of  mud  again,  and  sank  down  among  the  mists  and 
disappeared.  But  to  many  a  seasick  passenger  it  was  good  to 
see  the  green  hills  again,  and  all  were  more  cheerful  after  this 
episode  than  any  body  could  have  expected  them  to  be,  con 
sidering  how  sinfully  early  they  had  gotten  up. 

But  we  had  to  change  our  purpose  about  San  Miguel,  for  a 
storm  came  up  about  noon  that  so  tossed  and  pitched  the  vessel 
that  common  sense  dictated  a  run  for  shelter.  Therefore  we 
steered  for  the  nearest  island  of  the  group — Fayal,  (the  people 
there  pronounce  it  Fy-all,  and  put  the  accent  on  the  first 
syllable.)  We  anchored  in  the  open  roadstead  of  Horta,  half 
a  mile  from  the  shore.  The  town  has  eight  thousand  to  ten 
thousand  inhabitants.  Its  snow-white  houses  nestle  cosily  in  a 
sea  of  fresh  green  vegetation,  and  no  village  could  look  prettier 
or  more  attractive.  It  sits  in  the  lap  of  an  amphitheatre  of 
hills  which  are  three  hundred  to  seven  hundred  feet  high,  and 
carefully  cultivated  clear  to  their  summits — not  a  foot  of  soil 
left  idle.  Every  farm  and  every  acre  is  cut  up  into  little  square 


51 

inclosures  by  stone  walls,  whose  duty  it  is  to  protect  the  grow 
ing  products  from  the  destructive  gales  that  blow  there.  These 
hundreds  of  green  squares,  marked  by  their  black  lava  walls, 
make  the  hills  look  like  vast  checker-boards. 

The  islands  belong  to  Portugal,  and  every  thing  in  Fayal  has 
Portuguese  characteristics  about  it.  But  more  of  that  anon. 
A  swarm  of  swarthy,  noisy,  lying,  shoulder-shrugging,  gestic 
ulating  Portuguese  boatmen,  with  brass  rings  in  their  ears,  and 
fraud  in  their  hearts,  climbed  the  ship's  sides,  and  various  par 
ties  of  us  contracted  with  them  to  take  us  ashore  at  so  much  a 
head,  silver  coin  of  any  country.  We  landed  under  the  walls 
of  a  little  fort,  armed  with  batteries  of  twelve  and  thirty-two 
pounders,  which  Horta  considered  a  most  formidable  insti 
tution,  but  if  we  were  ever  to  get  after  it  with  one  of  our  tur- 
reted  monitors,  they  would  have  to  move  it  out  in  the  country 
if  they  wanted  it  where  they  could  go  and  find  it  again  when 
they  needed  it.  The  group  on  the  pier  was  a  rusty  one — men 
and  women,  and  boys  and  girls,  all  ragged,  and  barefoot,  un 
combed  and  unclean,  and  by  instinct,  education,  and  profession, 
beggars.  They  trooped  after  us,  and  never  more,  while  we 
tarried  in  Fayal,  did  we  get  rid  of  them.  We  walked  up  the 
middle  of  the  principal  street,  and  these  vermin  surrounded  us 
on  all  sides,  and  glared  upon  us ;  and  every  moment  excited 
couples  shot  ahead  of  the  procession  to  get  a  good  look  back, 
just  as  village  boys  do  when  they  accompany  the  elephant  on 
his  advertising  trip  from  street  to  street.  It  was  very  flattering 
to  me  to  be  part  of  the  material  for  such  a  sensation.  Here 
and  there  in  the  doorways  we  saw  women,  with  fashionable 
Portuguese  hoods  on.  This  hood  is  of  thick  blue  cloth, 
attached  to  a  cloak  of  the  same  stuff,  and  is  a  marvel  of  ugli 
ness.  It  stands  up  high,  and  spreads  far  abroad,  and  is  unfath- 
omably  deep.  It  fits  like  a  circus  tent,  and  a  woman's  head  is 
hidden  away  in  it  like  the  man's  who  prompts  the  singers  from 
his  tin  shed  in  the  stage  of  an  opera.  There  is  no  particle  of 
trimming  about  this  monstrous  capote,  as  they  call  it — it  is  just 
a  plain,  ugly  dead-blue  mass  of  sail,  and  a  woman  can't  go 
within  eight  points  of  the  wind  with  one  of  them  on  ;  she  has 


52 


A     DISASTROUS     BANQUET. 


CAPOTE. 


to  go  before  the  wind  or  not  at  all.  The  general  style  of  tlie 
capote  is  the  same  in  all  the  islands,  and  will  remain  so  for  the 

next  ten  thousand  years,  but  each  isl 
and  shapes  its  capotes  just  enough 
differently  from  the  others  to  enable 
an  observer  to  tell  at  a  glance  what 
particular  island  a  lady  hails  from. 

The  Portuguese  pennies  or  reis  (pro 
nounced  rays)  are  prodigious.  It  takes 
one  thousand  reis  to  make  a  dollar, 
and  all  financial  estimates  are  made 
in  reis.  We  did  not  know  this  until 
after  we  had  found  it  out  through 
Blucher.  Blucher  said  he  was  so 
happy  and  so  grateful  to  be  on  solid 
land  once  more,  that  he  wanted  to 
give  a  feast — said  he  had  heard  it 

was  a  cheap  land,  and  he  was  bound  to  have  a  grand  ban 
quet.  He  invited  nine  of  us,  and  we  ate  an  excellent  dinner 
at  the  principal  hotel.  In  the  midst  of  the  jollity  produced 
by  good  cigars,  good  wine,  and  passable  anecdotes,  the  landlord 
presented  his  bill.  Blucher  glanced  at  it  and  his  countenance 
fell.  He  took  another  look  to  assure  himself  that  his  senses 
had  not  deceived  him,  and  then  read  the  items  aloud,  in  a  fal 
tering  voice,  while  the  roses  in  his  cheeks  turned  to  ashes : 

"  'Ten  dinners,  at  600  reis,  6,000  reis !'  Euin  and  deso 
lation  !" 

"< Twenty-five  cigars,  at  100  reis,  2,500  reis!'  Oh,  my 
sainted  mother !" 

"  '  Eleven  bottles  of  wine,  at  1,200  reis,  13,200  reis  !'  Be 
with  us  all !" 

" i  TOTAL,  TWENTY-ONE  THOUSAND  SEVEN  HUNDRED  EEIS  !' 
The  suffering  Moses ! — there  ain't  money  enough  in  the  ship 
to  pay  that  bill !  Go — leave  me  to  my  misery,  boys,  I  am  a 
ruined  community." 

I  think  it  was  the  blankest  looking  party  I  ever  saw.  No 
body  could  say  a  word.  It  was  as  if  every  soul  had  been 


A     DISASTROUS     BANQUET. 


53 


stricken  dumb.  Wine-glasses  descended  slowly  to  the  table, 
their  contents  untasted.  Cigars  dropped  unnoticed  from  nerve 
less  fingers.  Each  man  sought  his  neighbor's  eye,  but  found 
in  it  no  ray  of  hope,  no  encouragement.  At  last  the  fearful 
silence  was  broken.  The  shadow  of  a  desperate  resolve  settled 


"RUIN    AND    DESOLATION  1" 

upon  Blucher's  countenance  like  a  cloud,  and  he  rose  up  and 
said: 

"  Landlord,  this  is  a  low,  mean  swindle,  and  I'll  never, 
never  stand  it.  Here's  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  Sir,  and 
it's  all  you'll  get — I'll  swim  in  blood,  before  I'll  pay  a  cent 
more." 

Our  spirits  rose  and  the  landlord's  fell — at  least  we  thought 
so ;  he  was  confused  at  any  rate,  notwithstanding  he  had  not 
understood  a  word  that  had  been  said.  He  glanced  from  the 


54:  THE     HAPPY    RESULT. 

little  pile  of  gold  pieces  to  Bluclier  several  times,  and  then 
Went  out.  He  must  have  visited  an  American,  for,  when  he 
returned,  he  brought  back  his  bill  translated  into  a  language 
that  a  Christian  could  understand — thus  : 


10  dinners,  6,000  reis,  or $6.00 

25  cigars,  2.500  reis,  or 2.50 

11  bottles  wine,  13,200  reis,  or 13.20 

Total  21,700  reis,  or $21.70 

Happiness  reigned  once  more  in  Blucher's  dinner  party. 
More  refreshments  were  ordered. 


CHAPTEE   VI. 

"  THINK  the  Azores  must  be  very  little  known  in  America. 
-*-  Out  of  our  whole  ship's  company  there  was  not  a  solitary 
individual  who  knew  any  thing  whatever  about  them.  Some 
of  the  party,  well  read  concerning  most  other  lands,  had  no 
other  information  about  the  Azores  than  that  they  were  a  group 
of  nine  or  ten  small  islands  far  out  in  the  Atlantic,  something 
more  than  half  way  between  New  York  and  Gibraltar.  That 
was  all.  These  considerations  move  me  to  put  in  a  paragraph 
of  dry  facts  just  here. 

The  community  is  eminently  Portuguese— that  is  to  say,  it 
is  slow,  poor,  shiftless,  sleepy,  and  lazy.  There  is  a  civil  gov 
ernor,  appointed  by  the  King  of  Portugal ;  and  also  a  military 
governor,  who  can  assume  supreme  control  and  suspend  the 
civil  government  at  his  pleasure.  The  islands  contain  a  popu 
lation  of  about  200,000,  almost  entirely  Portuguese.  Every 
thing  is  staid  and  settled,  for  the  country  was  one  hundred 
years  old  when  Columbus  discovered  America.  The  principal 
crop  is  corn,  and  they  raise  it  and  grind  it  just  as  their  great- 
great-great-grandfathers  did.  They  plow  with  a  board  slightly 
shod  with  iron  ;  their  trifling  little  harrows  are  drawn  by  men 
and  women;  small  windmills  grind  the  corn,  ten  bushels  a 
day,  and  there  is  one  assistant  superintendent  to  feed  the  mill 
and  a  general  superintendent  to  stand  by  and  keep  him  from 
going  to  sleep.  When  the  wind  changes  they  hitch  on  some 
donkeys,  and  actually  turn  the  whole  upper  half  of  the  mill 
around  until  the  sails  are  in  proper  position,  instead  of  fixing 
the  concern  so  that  the  sails  could  be  moved  instead  of  the 


56  A     CURIOUS     PEOPLE. 

mill.  Oxen  tread  the  wheat  from  the  ear,  after  the  fashion 
prevalent  in  the  time  of  Methuselah.  There  is  not  a  wheel 
barrow  in  the  land — they  carry  every  thing  on  their  heads,  or 
on  donkeys,  or  in  a  wicker-bodied  cart,  whose  wheels  are  solid 
blocks  of  wood  and  whose  axles  turn  with  the  wheel.  There 
is  not  a  modern  plow  in  the  islands,  or  a  threshing-machine. 
All  attempts  to  introduce  them  have  failed.  The  good  Cath 
olic  Portuguese  crossed  himself  and  prayed  God  to  shield  him 
from  all  blasphemous  desire  to  know  more  than  his  father  did 
before  him.  The  climate  is  mild;  they  never  have  snow  or 
ice,  and  I  saw  no  chimneys  in  the  town.  The  donkeys  and 
the  men,  women  and  children  of  a  family,  all  eat  and  sleep  in 
the  same  room,  and  are  unclean,  are  ravaged  by  vermin,  and 
are  truly  happy.  The  people  lie,  and  cheat  the  stranger,  and 
are  desperately  ignorant,  and  have  hardly  any  reverence  for 
their  dead.  The  latter  trait  shows  how  little  better  they  are 
than  the  donkeys  they  eat  and  sleep  with.  The  only  well- 
dressed  Portuguese  in  the  camp  are  the  half  a  dozen  well-to-do 
families,  the  Jesuit  priests  and  the  soldiers  of  the  little  garri 
son.  The  wages 'of  a  laborer  are  twenty  to  twenty-four  cents 
a  day,  and  those  of  a  good  mechanic  about  twice  as  much. 
They  count  it  in  reis  at  a  thousand  to  the  dollar,  and  this 
makes  them  rich  and  contented.  Fine  grapes  used  to  grow  in 
the  islands,  and  an  excellent  wine  was  made  and  exported. 
But  a  disease  killed  all  the  vines  fifteen  years  ago,  and  since 
that  time  no  wine  has  been  made.  The  islands  being  wholly 
of  volcanic  origin,  the  soil  is  necessarily  very  rich.  Nearly 
every  foot  of  ground  is  under  cultivation,  and  two  or  three 
crops  a  year  of  each  article  are  produced,  but  nothing  is 
exported  save  a  few  oranges — chiefly  to  England.  Nobody 
comes  here,  and  nobody  goes  away.  News  is  a  thing  unknown 
in  Fayal.  A  thirst  for  it  is  a  passion  equally  unknown.  A 
Portuguese  of  average  intelligence  inquired  if  our  civil  war 
was  over  ?  because,  he  said,  somebody  had  told  him  it  was — or 
at  least  it  ran  in  his  mind  that  somebody  had  told  him  some 
thing  like  that !  And  when  a  passenger  gave  an  officer  of  the 
garrison  copies  of  the  Tribune,  the  Herald,  and  Times,  he  was 


THE     CATHEDKAL.  57 

surprised  to  find  later  news  in  them  from  Lisbon  than  lie  had 
just  received  by  the  little  monthly  steamer.  He  was  told  that 
it  came  by  cable.  He  said  he  knew  they  had  tried  to  lay  a 
cable  ten  years  ago,  but  it  had  been  in  his  mind,  somehow, 
that  they  hadn't  succeeded  ! 

It  is  in  communities  like  this  that  Jesuit  humbuggery  flour 
ishes.  AVe  visited  a  Jesuit  cathedral  nearly  two  hundred 
years  old,  and  found  in  it  a  piece  of  the  veritable  cross  upon 
which  our  Saviour  was  crucified.  It  was  polished  and  hard, 
and  in  as  excellent  a  state  of  preservation  as  if  the  dread 
tragedy  on  Calvary  had  occurred  yesterday  instead  of  eighteen 
centuries  ago.  But  these  confiding  people  believe  in  that 
piece  of  wood  unhesitatingly. 

In  a  chapel  of  the  cathedral  is  an  altar  with  facings  of  solid 
silver — at  least  they  call  it  so,  and  I  think  myself  it  would  go 
a  couple  of  hundred  to  the  ton  (to  speak  after  the  fashion  of 
the  silver  miners,)  and  before  it  is  kept  forever  burning  a 
small  lamp.  A  devout  lady  who  died,  left  money  and  con 
tracted  for  unlimited  masses  for  the  repose  of  her  soul,  and 
also  stipulated  that  this  lamp  should  be  kept  lighted  always, 
day  and  night.  She  did  all  this  before  she  died,  you  under 
stand.  It  is  a  very  small  lamp,  and  a  very  dim  one,  and  it 
could  not  work  her  much  damage,  I  think,  if  it  went  out 
altogether. 

The  great  altar  of  the  cathedral,  and  also  three  or  four 
minor  ones,  are  a  perfect  mass  of  gilt  gimcracks  and  ginger 
bread.  And  they  have  a  sw^arm  of  rusty,  dusty,  battered 
apostles  standing  around  the  filagree  work,  some  on  one  leg  and 
some  with  one  eye  out  but  a  gamey  look  in  the  other,  and 
some  with  two  or  three  fingers  gone,  and  some  with  not 
enough  nose  left  to  blow — all  of  them  crippled  and  discour 
aged,  and  fitter  subjects  for  the  hospital  than  the  cathedral. 

The  walls  of  the  chancel  are  of  porcelain,  all  pictured  over 
with  figures  of  almost  life  size,  very  elegantly  wrought,  and 
dressed  in  the  fanciful  costumes  of  two  centuries  ago.  The 
design  was  a  history  of  something  or  somebody,  but  none  of 
us  were  learned  enough  to  read  the  story.  The  old  father, 


58  FANTASTIC     PILGRIMIZING. 

reposing  under  a  stone  close  by,  dated  1686,  might  have  told 
us  if  he  could  have  risen.  But  he  didn't. 

As  we  came  down  through  the  town,  we  encountered  a 
squad  of  little  donkeys  ready  saddled  for  use.  The  saddles 
were  peculiar,  to  say  the  least.  They  consisted  of  a  sort  of 
saw-buck,  with  a  small  mattress  on  it,  and  this  furniture  cov 
ered  about  half  the  donkey.  There  were  no  stirrups,  but 
really  such  supports  were  not  needed — to  use  such  a  saddle 
was  the  next  thing  to  riding  a  dinner  table — there  was  ample 
support  clear  out  to  one's  knee  joints.  A  pack  of  ragged  Por 
tuguese  muleteers  crowded  around  us,  offering  their  beasts  at 
half  a  dollar  an  hour — more  rascality  to  the  stranger,  for  the 
market  price  is  sixteen  cents.  Half  a  dozen  of  us  mounted 
the  ungainly  affairs,  and  submitted  to  the  indignity  of  making 
a  ridiculous  spectacle  of  ourselves  through  the  principal  streets 
of  a  town  of  10,000  inhabitants. 

We  started.  It  was  not  a  trot,  a  gallop,  or  a  canter,  but  a 
stampede,  and  made  up  of  all  possible  or  conceivable  gaits. 
No  spurs  were  necessary.  There  was  a  muleteer  to  every 
donkey  and  a  dozen  volunteers  beside,  and  they  banged  the 
donkeys  with  their  goad-sticks,  and  pricked  them  with  their 
spikes,  and  shouted  something  that  sounded  like  "  Sekki-yah  /" 
and  kept  up  a  din  and  a  racket  that  was  worse  than  Bedlam 
itself.  These  rascals  were  all  on  foot,  but  no  matter,  they 
were  always  up  to  time — they  can  outrun  and  outlast  a 
donkey.  Altogether  ours  was  a  lively  and  a  picturesque  pro 
cession,  and  drew  crowded  audiences  to  the  balconies  wherever 
we  went. 

Blucher  could  do  nothing  at  all  with  his  donkey.  The  beast 
scampered  zigzag  across  the  road  and  the  others  ran  into  him ; 
he  scraped  Blucher  against  carts  and  the  corners  of  houses ;  the 
road  was  fenced  in  with  high  stone  walls,  and  the  donkey  gave 
him  a  polishing  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other,  but 
never  once  took  the  middle ;  he  finally  came  to  the  house  he 
was  born  in  and  darted  into  the  parlor,  scraping  Blucher  off 
at  the  doorway.  After  remounting,  Blucher  said  to  the 
muleteer,  "  Now,  that's  enough,  you  know ;  you  go  slow  here- 


THE    CATASTROPHE. 


59 


after."  But  the  fellow  knew  no  English  and  did  not  under 
stand,  so  he  simply  said,  "  Sekki-yah  I "  and  the  donkey  was 
off  again  like  a  shot.  lie  turned  a  corner  suddenly,  and 
Blucher  went  over  his  head.  And,  to  speak  truly,  every  mule 
stumbled  over  the  two,  and  the  whole  cavalcade  was  piled  up 


"  SEKKI-YAH  I" 

in  a  heap.  No  harm  done.  A  fall  from  one  of  those  donkeys 
is  of  little  more  consequence  than  rolling  off  a  sofa.  The 
donkeys  all  stood  still  after  the  catastrophe,  and  waited  for 
their  dismembered  saddles  to  be  patched  up  and  put  on  by  the 
noisy  muleteers.  Blucher  was  pretty  angry,  and  wanted  to 
swear,  but  every  time  he  opened  his  mouth  his  animal  did  so 


60  ORIGIN     OF     THE     RUSS     PAVEMENT. 

also,  and  let  off  a  series  of  brays  that  drowned  all  other 
sounds. 

It  was  fun,  skurrying  around  the  breezy  hills  and  through 
the  beautiful  canons.  There  was  that  rare  thing,  novelty, 
about  it ;  it  was  a  fresh,  new,  exhilarating  sensation,  this 
donkey  riding,  and  worth  a  hundred  worn  and  threadbare 
home  pleasures. 

The  roads  were  a  wonder,  and  well  they  might  be.  Here 
was  an  island  with  only  a  handful  of  people  in  it — 25,000 — 
and  yet  such  fine  roads  do  not  exist  in  the  United  States  out 
side  of  Central  Park.  Every  where  you  go,  in  any  direction, 
you  find  either  a  hard,  smooth,  level  thoroughfare,  just 
sprinkled  with  black  lava  sand,  and  bordered  with  little  gutters 
neatly  paved  with  small  smooth  pebbles,  or  compactly  paved 
ones  like  Broadway.  They  talk  much  of  the  Russ  pavement 
in  New  York,  and  call  it  a  new  invention — yet  here  they 
have  been  using  it  in  this  remote  little  isle  of  the  sea  for  two 
hundred  years !  Every  street  in  Horta  is  handsomely  paved 
with  the  heavy  Russ  blocks,  and  the  surface  is  neat  and  true 
as  a  floor — not  marred  by  holes  like  Broadway.  And  every 
road  is  fenced  in  by  tall,  solid  lava  walls,  wrhich  will  last  a 
thousand  years  in  this  land  where  frost  is  unknown.  They  are 
very  thick,  and  are  often  plastered  and  whitewashed,  and 
capped  with  projecting  slabs  of  cut  stone.  Trees  from  gardens 
above  hang  their  swaying  tendrils  down,  and  contrast  their 
bright  green  with  the  whitewash  or  the  black  lava  of  the 
walls,  and  make  them  beautiful.  The  trees  and  vines  stretch 
across  these  narrow  roadways  sometimes,  and  so  shut  out  the 
sun  that  you  seem  to  be  riding  through  a  tunnel.  The  pave 
ments,  the  roads,  and  the  bridges  are  all  government  work. 

The  bridges  are  of  a  single  span — a  single  arch — of  cut 
stone,  without  a  support,  and  paved  on  top  with  flags  of  lava 
and  ornamental  pebble  work.  Every  where  are  walls,  walls, 
walls, — and  all  of  them  tasteful  and  handsome — and  eter 
nally  substantial ;  and  every  where  are  those  marvelous  pave 
ments,  so  neat,  so  smooth,  and  so  indestructible.  And  if  ever 
roads  and  streets,  and  the  outsides  of  houses,  were  perfectly 


SQUARING     ACCOUNTS.  61 

free  from  any  sign  or  semblance  of  dirt,  or  dust,  or  mud,  or 
uncleanliness  of  any  kind,  it  is  Ilorta,  it  is  Fayal.  The  lower 
classes  of  the  people,  in  their  persons  and  their  domicils,  are 
not  clean — but  there  it  stops — the  town  and  the  island  are 
miracles  of  cleanliness. 

We  arrived  home  again  finally,  after  a  ten-mile  excursion, 
and  the  irrepressible  muleteers  scampered  at  our  heels  through 
the  main  street,  goading  the  donkeys,  shouting  the  everlasting 
"  Sekhi-yah"  and  singing  "  John  Brown's  Body "  in  ruinous 
English. 

When  we  were  dismounted  and  it  came  to  settling,  the 
snouting  and  jawing,  and  swearing  and  quarreling  among  the 
muleteers  and  with  us,  was  nearly  deafening.  One  fellow 
would  demand  a  dollar  an  hour  for  the  use  of  his  donkey ; 
another  claimed  half  a  dollar  for  pricking  him  up,  another  a 
quarter  for  helping  in  that  service,  and  about  fourteen  guides 
presented  bills  for  showing  us  the  way  through  the  town  and 
its  environs ;  and  every  vagrant  of  them  was  more  vociferous, 
and  more  vehement,  and  more  frantic  in  gesture  than  his 
neighbor.  We  paid  one  guide,  and  paid  for  one  muleteer  to 
each  donkey. 

The  mountains  on  some  of  the  islands  are  very  high.  We 
sailed  along  the  shore  of  the  Island  of  Pico,  under  a  stately 
green  pyramid  that  rose  up  with  one  unbroken  sweep  from  our 
very  feet  to  an  altitude  of  7,613  feet,  and  thrust  its  summit 
above  the  white  clouds  like  an  island  adrift  in  a  fog ! 

We  got  plenty  of  fresh  oranges,  lemons,  figs,  apricots,  etc. 
in  these  Azores,  of  course.  But  I  will  desist.  I  am  not  here 
to  write  Patent-Office  reports. 

We  are  on  our  way  to  Gibraltar,  and  shall  reach  there  five 
or  six  days  out  from  the  Azores. 


CHAPTEE    VII. 

A  WEEK  of  buffeting  a  tempestuous  and  relentless  sea ;  a 
-£X_  week  of  seasickness  and  deserted  cabins ;  of  lonely 
quarter-decks  drenched  with  spray — spray  so  ambitious  that  it 
even  coated  the  smoke-stacks  thick  with  a  white  crust  of  salt 
to  their  very 'tops;  a  week  of  shivering  in  the  shelter  of  the 
life-boats  and  deck-houses  by  day,  and  blowing  suffocating 
"clouds"  and  boisterously  performing  at  dominoes  in  the 
smoking  room  at  night. 

And  the  last  night  of  the  seven  was  the  stormiest  of  all. 
There  was  no  thunder,  no  noise  but  the  pounding  bows  of  the 
ship,  the  keen  whistling  of  the  gale  through  the  cordage,  and 
the  rush  of  the  seething  waters.  But  the  vessel  climbed  aloft 
as  if  she  would  climb  to  heaven — then  paused  an  instant  that 
.seemed  a  century,  and  plunged  headlong  down  again,  as  from 
a  precipice.  The  sheeted  sprays  drenched  the  decks  like  rain. 
The  blackness  of  darkness  was  every  where.  At  long  inter 
vals  a  flash  of  lightning  clove  it  with  a  quivering  line  of  fire, 
that  revealed  a  heaving  world  of  water  where  was  nothing 
before,  kindled  the  dusky  cordage  to  glittering  silver,  and  lit 
up  the  faces  of  the  men  with  a  ghastly  lustre ! 

Fear  drove  many  on  deck  that  were  used  to  avoiding  the 
night-winds  and  the  spray.  Some  thought  the  vessel  could  not 
live  through  the  night,  and  it  seemed  less  dreadful  to  stand 
out  in  the  midst  of  the  wild  tempest  and  see  the  peril  that 
threatened  than  to  be  shut  up  in  the  sepulchral  cabins,  under 
the  dim  lamps  and  imagine  the  horrors  that  were  abroad  on 
the  ocean.  And  once  out — once  where  they  could  see  the 


SPAIN     AND     AFRICA     ON     EXHIBITION.  63 

ship  struggling  in  the  strong  grasp  of  the  storm — once  where 
they  could  hear  the  shriek  of  the  winds,  and  face  the  driving 
spray  and  look  out  upon  the  majestic  picture  the  lightnings 
disclosed,  they  were  prisoners  to  a  fierce  fascination  they  could 
not  resist,  and  so  remained.  It  was  a  wild  night — and  a  very, 
very  long  one. 

Every  body  was  sent  scampering  to  the  deck  at  seven  o'clock 
this  lovely  morning  of  the  30th  of  June  with  the  glad  news 
that  land  was  in  sight !  It  was  a  rare  thing  and  a  joyful,  to 
see  all  the  ship's  family  abroad  once  more,  albeit  the  happiness 
that  sat  upon  every  countenance  could  only  partly  conceal  the 
ravages  which  that  long  siege  of  storms  had  wrought  there. 
But  dull  eyes  soon  sparkled  with  pleasure,  pallid  cheeks  flushed 
again,  and  frames  weakened  by  sickness  gathered  new  life 
from  the  quickening  influences  of  the  bright,  fresh  morning. 
Yea,  and  from  a  still  more  potent  influence :  the  worn  casta 
ways  were  to  see  the  blessed  land  again ! — and  to  see  it  was  to 
bring  back  that  mother-land  that  was  in  all  their  thoughts. 

"Within  the  hour  we  were  fairly  within  the  Straits  of  Gib 
raltar,  the  tall  yellow-splotched  hills  of  Africa  on  our  right, 
with  their  bases  veiled  in  a  blue  haze  and  their  summits 
swathed  in  clouds — the  same  being  according  to  Scripture, 
which  says  that  "  clouds  and  darkness  are  over  the  land."  The 
words  were  spoken  of  this  particular  portion  of  Africa,  I  be 
lieve.  On  our  left  were  the  granite-ribbed  domes  of  old  Spain. 
The  Strait  is  only  thirteen  miles  wide  in  its  narrowest  part. 

At  short  intervals,  along  the  Spanish  shore,  were  quaint- 
looking  old  stone  towers — Moorish,  we  thought — but  learned 
better  afterwards.  In  former  times  the  Morocco  rascals  used 
to  coast  along  the  Spanish  Main  in  their  boats  till  a  safe  oppor 
tunity  seemed  to  present  itself,  and  then  dart  in  and  capture  a 
Spanish  village,  and  carry  off  all  the  pretty  women  they  could 
find.  It  was  a  pleasant  business,  and  was  very  popular.  The 
Spaniards  built  these  watchtowers  on  the  hills  to  enable  them 
to  keep  a  sharper  lookout  on  the  Moroccan  speculators. 

The  picture  on  the  other  hand  was  very  beautiful  to  eyes 
weary  of  the  changeless  sea,  and  bye  and  bye  the  ship's  com- 


GREETING     A     MAJESTIC     STRANGER. 


pany  grew  wonderfully  cheerful.  But  while  we  stood  admir 
ing  the  cloud-capped  peaks  and  the  lowlands  robed  in  misty 
gloom,  a  finer  picture  burst  upon  us  and  chained  every  eye 
like  a  magnet — a  stately  ship,  with  canvas  piled  on  canvas  till 

she  was  one  towering  mass 
of  bellying  sail!  She  came 
speeding  over  the  sea  like  a 
great  bird.  Africa  and  Spain 
were  forgotten.  All  homage 
was  for  the  beautiful  stranger. 
While  every  body  gazed,  she 
swept  superbly  by  and  flung 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  to  the 
breeze !  Quicker  than  thought, 
hats  and  handkerchiefs  flashed 
in  the  air,  and  a  cheer  went 
up !  She  was  beautiful  be 
fore — she  was  radiant  now. 
Many  a  one  on  our  decks 
knew  then  for  the  first  time 
how  tame  a  sight  his  coun 
try's  flag  is  at  home  compared 
to  what  it  is  in  a  foreign  land. 
To  see  it  is  to  see  a  vision 

of  home  itself  and  all  its  idols,  and  feel  a  thrill  that  would  stir 
a  very  river  of  sluggish  blood  ! 

We  were  approaching  the  famed  Pillars  of  Hercules,  and 
already  the  African  one,  " Ape's  Hill,"  a  grand  old  mountain 
with  summit  streaked  with  granite  ledges,  was  in  sight.  The 
other,  the  great  Rock  of  Gibraltar,  was  yet  to  come.  The 
ancients  considered  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  the  head  of  navi 
gation  and  the  end  of  the  world.  The  information  the 
ancients  didn't  have  was  very  voluminous.  Even  the  prophets 
wrote  book  after  book  and  epistle  after  epistle,  yet  never  once 
hinted  at  the  existence  of  a  great  continent  on  our  side  of  the 
water ;  yet  they  must  have  known  it  was  there,  I  should  think. 
In  a  few  moments  a  lonely  and  enormous  mass  of  rock, 


BEAUTIFUL   STRANGER. 


THE     ROCK     OF     GIBRALTAR.  65 

standing  seemingly  in  the  centre  of  the  wide  strait  and  appar 
ently  washed  on  all  sides  by  the  sea,  swung  magnificently  into 
view,  and  we  needed  no  tedious  traveled  parrot  to  tell  us  it 
was  Gibraltar.  There  could  not  be  two  rocks  like  that  in  one 
kingdom. 

The  Rock  of  Gibraltar  is  about  a  mile  and  a  half  long,  I 
should  say,  by  1,400  to  1,500  feet  high,  and  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  wide  at  its  base.  One  side  and  one  end  of  it  come  about 
as  straight  up  out  of  the  sea  as  the  side  of  a  house,  the  other 
end  is  irregular  and  the  other  side  is  a  steep  slant  which  an 
army  would  find  very  difficult  to  climb.  At  the  foot  of  this 
slant  is  the  walled  town  of  Gibraltar — or  rather  the  town 
occupies  part  of  the  slant.  Evrery  where — on  hillside,  in  the 
precipice,  by  the  sea,  on  the  heights, — every  where  you  choose 
to  look,  Gibraltar  is  clad  with  masonry  and  bristling  with 
guns.  It  makes  a  striking  and  lively  picture,  from  whatsoever 
point  you  contemplate  it.  It  is  pushed  out  into  the  sea  on 
the  end  of  a  flat,  narrow  strip  of  land,  and  is  suggestive 
of  a  "  gob  "  of  mud  on  the  end  of  a  shingle.  A  few  hundred 
yards  of  this  flat  ground  at  its  base  belongs  to  the  English, 
and  then,  extending  across  the  strip  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Mediterranean,  a  distance  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  comes  the 
"  Neutral  Ground,"  a  space  two  or  three  hundred  yards  wide, 
which  is  free  to  both  parties. 

"Are  you  going  through  Spain  to  Paris?"  That  question 
wras  bandied  about  the  ship  day  and  night  from  Fayal  to 
Gibraltar,  and  I  thought  I  never  could  get  so  tired  of  hearing 
any  one  combination  of  words  again,  or  more  tired  of  answer 
ing,  "  I  don't  know."  At  the  last  moment  six  or  seven  had 
sufficient  decision  of  character  to  make  up  their  minds  to  go, 
and  did  go,  and  I  felt  a  sense  of  relief  at  once — it  was  forever 
too  late,  now,  and  I  could  make  up  my  mind  at  my  leisure, 
not  to  go.  I  must  have  a  prodigious  quantity  of  mind ;  it 
takes  me  as  much  as  a  week,  sometimes,  to  make  it  up. 

But  behold  how  annoyances  repeat  themselves.  We  had  no 
sooner  gotten  rid  of  the  Spain  distress  than  the  Gibraltar 
guides  started  another — a  tiresome  repetition  of  a  legend  that 

5 


66  TIRESOME     REPETITION. 

had  nothing  very  astonishing  about  it,  even  in  the  first  place  : 
"  That  high  hill  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's  Chair ;  it  is 
because  one  of  the  Queens  of  Spain  placed  her  chair  there 
when  the  French  and  Spanish  troops  were  besieging  Gibraltar, 
and  said  she  would  never  move  from  the  spot  till  the  English 
flag  was  lowered  from  the  fortresses.  If  the  English  hadn't 
been  gallant  enough  to  lower  the  flag  for  a  few  hours  one  day, 
she'd  have  had  to  break  her  oath  or  die  up  there." 

We  rode  on  asses  and  mules  up  the  steep,  narrow  streets 
and  entered  the  subterranean  galleries  the  English  have  blasted 
out  in  the  rock.  These  galleries  are  like  spacious  railway 
tunnels,  and  at  short  intervals  in  them  great  guns  frown  out 
upon  sea  and  town  through  port-holes  five  or  six  hundred  feet 
above  the  ocean.  There  is  a  mile  or  so  of  this  subterranean 
work,  and  it  must  have  cost  a  vast  deal  of  money  and  labor. 
The  gallery  guns  command  the  peninsula  and  the  harbors  of 
both  oceans,  but  they  might  as  well  not  be  there,  I  should 
think,  for  an  army  could  hardly  climb  the  perpendicular  wall 
of  the  rock  any  how.  Those  lofty  port-holes  afford  superb 
views  of  the  sea,  though.  At  one  place,  where  a  jutting  crag 
was  hollowed  out  into  a  great  chamber  whose  furniture  was 
huge  cannon  and  whose  windows  were  port-holes,  a  glimpse 
was  caught  of  a  hill  not  far  away,  and  a  soldier  said  : 

"  That  high  hill  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's  Chair ;  it  is 
because  a  queen  of  Spain  placed  her  chair  there,  once,  when 
the  French  and  Spanish  troops  were  besieging  Gibraltar,  and 
said  she  would  never  move  from  the  spot  till  the  English 
flag  was  lowered  from  the  fortresses.  If  the  English  hadn't 
been  gallant  enough  to  lower  the  flag  for  a  few  hours,  one  day, 
she'd  have  had  to  break  her  oath  or  die  up  there." 

On  the  topmost  pinnacle  of  Gibraltar  we  halted  a  good 
while,  and  no  doubt  the  mules  were  tired.  They  had  a  right 
to  be.  The  military  road  was  good,  but  rather  steep,  and 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  it.  The  view  from  the  narrow  ledge 
was  magnificent ;  from  it  vessels  seeming  like  the  tiniest  little 
toy-boats,  were  turned  into  noble  ships  by  the  telescopes ;  and 
other  vessels  that  were  fifty  miles  away,  and  even  sixty,  they 


THE    QUEEN'S    CHAIR. 


67 


said,  and  invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  could  be  clearly  distin 
guished  through  those  same  telescopes.  Below,  on  one  side, 
we  looked  down  upon  an  endless  mass  of  batteries,  and  on  the 
other  straight  down  to  the  sea. 

While  I  was  resting  ever  so  comfortably  on  a  rampart,  and 
cooling  my  baking  head  in  the  delicious  breeze,  an  officious 
guide  belonging  to  another  party  came  up  and  said  : 

"Senor,  that  high  lull  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's  Chair" — 


"Sir,  I  am  a  helpless  orphan 
in  a  foreign  land.  Have  pity 
on  me.  Don't — now  don't  inflict 
that  most  III-FERNAL  old  legend  on  me  any  more  to-day !" 

There — I  had  used  strong  language,  after  promising  I  would 
never  do  so  again  ;  but  the  provocation  was  more  than  human 
nature  could  bear.  If  you  had  been  bored  so,  when  you  had 
the  noble  panorama  of  Spain  and  Africa  and  the  blue  Medi- 


68          CU-RIOSITIES     OF     THE     SECRET     CAVERNS. 

terranean,  spread  abroad  at  your  feet,  and  wanted  to  gaze, 
and  enjoy,  and  surfeit  yourself  with  its  beauty  in  silence, 
you  might  have  even  burst  into  stronger  language  than  I 
did. 

Gibraltar  has  stood  several  protracted  sieges,  one  of  them 
of  nearly  four  years  duration  (it  failed,)  and  the  English  only 
captured  it  by  stratagem.  The  wonder  is  that  any  body  should 
ever  dream  of  trying  so  impossible  a  project  as  the  taking  it 
by  assault — and  yet  it  has  been  tried  more  than  once. 

The  Moors  held  the  place  twelve  hundred  years  ago,  and  a 
stanch  old  castle  of  theirs  of  that  date  still  frowns  from  the 
middle  of  the  town,  with  moss-grown  battlements  and  sides 
well  scarred  by  shots  fired  in  battles  and  sieges  that  are  for 
gotten  now.  A  secret  chamber,  in  the  rock  behind  it,  was 
discovered  some  time  ago,  which  contained  a  sword  of  ex 
quisite  workmanship,  and  some  quaint  old  armor  of  a  fashion 
that  antiquaries  are  not  acquainted  with,  though  it  is  supposed 
to  be  Roman.  Roman  armor  and  Roman  relics,  of  various 
kinds,  have  been  found  in  a  cave  in  the  sea  extremity  of  Gib 
raltar  ;  history  says  Rome  held  this  part  of  the  country  about 
the  Christian  era,  and  these  things  seem  to  confirm  the  state 
ment. 

In  that  cave,  also,  are  found  human  bones,  crusted  with  a 
very  thick,  stony  coating,  and  wise  men  have  ventured  to  say 
that  those  men  not  only  lived  before  the  flood,  but  as  much 
as  ten  thousand  years  before  it.  It  may  be  true — it  looks 
reasonable  enough — but  as  long  as  those  parties  can't  vote  any 
more,  the  matter  can  be  of  no  great  public  interest.  In  this 
cave,  likewise,  are  found  skeletons  and  fossils  of  animals  that 
exist  in  every  part  of  Africa,  yet  within  memory  and  tradition 
have  never  existed  in  any  portion  of  Spain  save  this  lone  peak 
of  Gibraltar  !  So  the  theory  is  that  the  channel  between  Gib 
raltar  and  Africa  was  once  dry  land,  and  that  the  low,  neutral 
neck  between  Gibraltar  and  the  Spanish  hills  behind  it  was 
once  ocean,  and  of  course  that  these  African  animals,  being 
over  at  Gibraltar  (after  rock,  perhaps — there  is  plenty  there,) 
got  closed  out  when  the  great  change  occurred.  The  hills  in 


ECCENTRIC     SHIPMATES.  69 

Africa,  across  the  channel,  are  full  of  apes,  and  there  are 
now,  and  always  have  been,  apes  on  the  rock  of  Gibraltar 
— but  not  elsewhere  in  Spain  !  The  subject  is  an  interesting 
one. 

There  is  an  English  garrison  at  Gibraltar  of  6,000  or  7,000 
men,  and  so  uniforms  of  flaming  red  are  plenty ;  and  red  and 
blue,  and  undress  costumes  of  snowy  white,  and  also  the  queer 
uniform  of  the  bare-kneed  Highlander ;  and  one  sees  soft-eyed 
Spanish  girls  from  San  Roque,  and  veiled  Moorish  beauties  (I 
suppose  they  are  beauties)  from  Tarifa,  and  turbaned,  sashed 
and  trowsered  Moorish  merchants  from  Fez,  and  long-robed, 
bare-legged,  ragged  Mohammedan  vagabonds  from  Tetouan 
and  Tangier,  some  brown,  some  yellow  and  some  as  black  as 
virgin  ink — and  Jews  from  all  around,  in  gaberdine,  skull-cap 
and  slippers,  just  as  they  are  in  pictures  and  theatres,  and  just 
as  they  were  three  thousand  years  ago,  no  doubt.  You  can 
easily  understand  that  a  tribe  (somehow  our  pilgrims  suggest 
that  expression,  because  they  march  in  a  straggling  procession 
through  these  foreign  places  with  such  an  Indian-like  air  of 
complacency  and  independence  about  them,)  like  ours,  made 
up  from  fifteen  or  sixteen  States  of  the  Union,  found  enough 
to  stare  at  in  this  shifting  panorama  of  fashion  to-day. 

Speaking  of  our  pilgrims  reminds  me  that  we  have  one  or 
two  people  among  us  who  are  sometimes  an  annoyance. 
However,  I  do  not  count  the  Oracle  in  that  list.  I  will  explain 
that  the  Oracle  is  an  innocent  old  ass  who  eats  for  four  and 
looks  wiser  than  the  whole  Academy  of  France  would  have 
any  right  to  look,  and  never  uses  a  one-syllable  word  when  he 
can  think  of  a  longer  one,  and  never  by  any  possible  chance 
knows  the  meaning  of  any  long  word  he  uses,  or  ever  gets  it 
in  the  right  place  :  yet  he  will  serenely  venture  an  opinion  on 
the  most  abstruse  subject,  and  back  it  up  complacently  with 
quotations  from  authors  who  never  existed,  and  finally  when 
cornered  will  slide  to  the  other  side  of  the  question,  say  he  has 
been  there  all  the  time,  and  come  back  at  you  with  your  own 
spoken  arguments,  only  with  the  big  words  all  tangled,  and 
play  them  in  your  very  teeth  as  original  with  himself.  He 


70 


ECCENTRIC    SHIPMATES. 


reads  a  chapter  in  the  guide-books,  mixes  the  facts  all  up, 
with  his  bad  memory,  and  then  goes  off  to  inflict  the  whole 
mess  on  somebody  as  wisdom  which  has  been  festering  in  his 
brain  for  years,  and  which  he  gathered  in  college  from  erudite 
authors  who  are  dead,  now,  and  out  of  print.  This  morning 
at  breakfast  he  pointed  out  of  the  window,  and  said  : 

"  Do  you  see  that  there  hill  out  there  on  that  African  coast  ? 
— It's  one  of  them  Pillows  of  Herkewls,  I  should  say — and 
there's  the  ultimate  one  alongside  of  it." 

^  The  ultimate  one — that  is  a  good  word — but  the  Pillars 
are  not  both  on  the  same  side  of  the  strait."  (I  saw  he  had 
been  deceived  by  a  carelessly  written  sentence  in  the  Guide 
Book.) 

"  Well,  it  ain't  for  you  to  say,  nor  for  me.  Some  authors 

states  it  that 


wTay 


and   some 


states  it  differ 
ent.  Old  Gib 
bons  don't  say 
nothing  about  it, 
— just  shirks  it 
complete  —  Gib 
bons  always 
done  that  when 
he  got  stuck — 
but  there  is  Eo- 
lampton,  what 
does  he  say  ? 
Why,  he  says 

that  they  was  both  on  the  same  side,   and  Trinculian,  and 
Sobaster,  and  Syraccus,  and  Langomarganbl— 

"  Oh,  that  will  do — that's  enough.  If  you  have  got  your 
hand  in  for  inventing  authors  and  testimony,  I  have  nothing 
more  to  say — let  them  be  on  the  same  side." 

We  don't  mind  the  Oracle.  We  rather  like  him.  We  can 
tolerate  the  Oracle  very  easily;  but  we  have  a  poet  and  a 
good-natured  enterprising  idiot  on  board,  and  they  do  distress 


THE   ORACLE. 


ECCENTRIC     SHIPMATES. 


71 


the  company.  The  one  gives  copies  of  liis  verses  to  Consuls, 
commanders,  hotel  keepers,  Arabs,  Dutch, — to  any  body,  in 
fact,  who  will  submit  to  a  grievous  infliction  most  kindly 
meant.  His  poetry  is  all  very  well  on  shipboard,  notwith 
standing  when  he  wrote  an  "  Ode  to  the  Ocean  in  a  Storm  " 
in  one  half-hour,  and  an  "Apostrophe  to  the  Rooster  in  the 
Waist  of  the  Ship  "  in  the  next,  the  transition  was  considered 
to  be  rather  abrupt ;  but  when  he  sends  an  invoice  of  rhymes 
to  the  Governor  of  Fayal  and  another  to  the  Commander-in- 
chief  and  other  dignitaries  in  Gibraltar,  with  the  compliments 
of  the  Laureate  of  the  Ship,  it  is  not  popular  with  the  passengers. 

The  other  personage  I  have  mentioned  is  young  and  green, 
and  not  bright,  not  learned  and  not  wise.  He  will  be,  though, 
some  day,  if  he  recollects  the  answers 
to  all  his  questions.  He  is  known 
about  the  ship  as  the  "  Interrogation 
Point,"  and  this  by  constant  use  has 
become  shortened  to  "Interrogation." 
He  has  distinguished  himself  twice  al 
ready.  In  Fayal  they  pointed  out  a 
hill  and  told  him  it  was  eight  hun 
dred  feet  high  and  eleven  hundred 
feet  long.  And  they  told  him  there 
was  a  tunnel  two  thousand  feet  long 
and  one  thousand  feet  high  running 
through  the  hill,  from  end  to  end. 
He  believed  it.  He  repeated  it  to  every  body,  discussed  it, 
and  read  it  from  his  notes.  Finally,  he  took  a  useful  hint  from 
this  remark  which  a  thoughtful  old  pilgrim  made  : 

"  Well,  yes,  it  is  a  little  remarkable — singular  tunnel  alto 
gether — stands  up  out  of  the  top  of  the  hill  about  two  hundred 
feet,  and  one  end  of  it  sticks  out  of  the  hill  about  nine  hundred !" 

Here  in  Gibraltar  he  corners  these  educated  British  officers 
and  badgers  them  with  braggadocio  about  America  and  the 
wonders  she  can  perform.  He  told  one  of  them  a  couple  of 
our  gunboats  could  come  here  and  knock  Gibraltar  into  the 
Mediterranean  Sea ! 


1  INTERROGATION    POINT." 


A    PRIVATE    FEOLIC    IN    AFRICA. 


At  this  present  moment,  half  a  dozen  of  us  are  taking  a 
private  pleasure  excursion  of  our  own  devising.  We  form 
rather  more  than  half  the  list  of  white  passengers  on  board  a 
small  steamer  bound  for  the  venerable  Moorish  town  of  Tan 
gier,  Africa.  Nothing  could  be  more  absolutety  certain 
than  that  we  are  enjoying  ourselves.  One  can  not  do  other 
wise  who  speeds  over  these  sparkling  waters,  and  breathes  the 
soft  atmosphere  of  this  sunny  land.  Care  can  not  assail  us 
here.  We  are  out  of  its  jurisdiction. 

We  even  steamed  recklessly  by  the  frowning  fortress  of 
Malabat,  (a  stronghold  of  the  Emperor  of  Morocco,)  without  a 


twinge  of  fear.     The  whole  garrison 
turned  out  under  arms,  and  assumed    / 
a  threatening  attitude — yet  still  we 

did  not  fear.  The  entire  garrison  marched  and  counter 
marched,  within  the  rampart,  in  full  view — yet  notwithstand 
ing  even  this,  we  never  flinched. 


BEARDING    THE    MOOR    IN    HIS    CASTLE.  73 

I  suppose  we  really  do  not  know  what  fear  is.  I  inquired 
the  name  of  the  garrison  of  the  fortress  of  Malabat,  and  they 
said  it  was  Meliemet  Ali  Ben  Sancorn.  I  said  it  would  be  a 
good  idea  to  get  some  more  garrisons  to  help  him ;  but 
they  said  no ;  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  hold  the  place,  and 
he  was  competent  to  do  that ;  had  done  it  two  years  already. 
That  was  evidence  which  one  could  not  well  refute.  There  is 
nothing  like  reputation. 

Every  now  and  then,  my  glove  purchase  in  Gibraltar  last 
night  intrudes  itself  upon  me.  Dan  and  the  ship's  surgeon 
and  I  had  been  up  to  the  great  square,  listening  to  the  music 
of  the  fine  military  bands,  and  contemplating  English  and 
Spanish  female  loveliness  and  fashion,  and,  at  9  o'clock,  were 
on  our  way  to  the  theatre,  when  we  met  the  General,  the 
Judge,  the  Commodore,  the  Colonel,  and  the  Commissioner  of 
the  United  States  of  America  to  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa, 
who  had  been  to  the  Club  House,  to  register  their  several 
titles  and  impoverish  the  bill  of  fare ;  and  they  told  us  to  go 
over  to  the  little  variety  store,  near  the  Hall  of  Justice,  and 
buy  some  kid  gloves.  They  said  they  were  elegant,  and  very 
moderate  in  price.  It  seemed  a  stylish  thing  to  go  to  the 
theatre  in  kid  gloves,  and  we  acted  upon  the  hint.  A  very 
handsome  young  lady  in  the  store  offered  me  a  pair  of  blue 
gloves.  I  did  not  want  blue,  but  she  said  they  would  look 
very  pretty  on  a  hand  like  mine.  The  remark  touched  me 
tenderly.  I  glanced  furtively  at  my  hand,  and  somehow  it 
did  seem  rather  a  comely  member.  I  tried  a  glove  011  my 
left,  and  blushed  a  little.  Manifestly  the  size  was  too  small 
for  me.  But  I  felt  gratified  when  she  said : 

"  Oh,  it  is  just  right !" — yet  I  knew  it  was  no  such  thing. 

I  tugged  at  it  diligently,  but  it  was  discouraging  work. 
She  said : 

"  Ah !  I  see  you  are  accustomed  to  wearing  kid  gloves — but 
some  gentlemen  are  so  awkward  about  putting  them  on." 

It  was  the  last  compliment  I  had  expected.  I  only  under 
stand  putting  on  the  buckskin  article  perfectly.  I  made 
another  effort,  and  tore  the  glove  from  the  base  of  the  thumb 


VANITY    REBUKED. 


into  the  palm  of  the  hand — and  tried  to  hide  the  rent.  She 
kept  up  her  compliments,  and  I  kept  up  my  determination  to 
deserve  them  or  die : 

"  Ah,  you  have  had  experience !"  [A  rip  down  the  back 
of  the  hand.]  "  They  are  just  right  for  you — your  hand  is 

very  small — if  they 
tear  you  need  not 
pay  for  them."  [A 
rent  across  the 
middle.]  "  I  can 
always  tell  when  a 
gentleman  under 
stands  putting  on 
kid  gloves.  There 
is  a  grace  about  it 
that  only  comes 
with  long  practice. 
[The  whole  after 
guard  of  the  glove 
"  fetched  away,"  as 
the  sailors  say,  the 

fabric  parted  across  the  knuckles/ and  nothing  was  left  but  a 
melancholy  ruin.] 

I  was  too  much  flattered  to  make  an  exposure,  and  throw 
the  merchandise  on  the  angel's  hands.  I  was  hot,  vexed,  con 
fused,  but  still  happy ;  but  I  hated  the  other  boys  for  taking 
such  an  absorbing  interest  in  the  proceedings.  I  wished  they 
were  in  Jericho.  I  felt  exquisitely  mean  when  I  said  cheer- 
fully- 

"  This  one  does  very  well ;  it  fits  elegantly.  I  like  a  glove 
that  fits.  No,  never  mind,  ma'am,  never  mind ;  I'll  put  the 
other  on  in  the  street.  It  is  warm  here." 

It  was  warm.  It  was  the  warmest  place  I  ever  was  in.  I 
paid  the  bill,  and  as  I  passed  out  with  a  fascinating  bow,  I 
thought  I  detected  a  light  in  the  woman's  eye  that  was  gently 
ironical ;  and  when  I  looked  back  from  the  street,  and  she  w^as 
laughing  all  to  herself  about  something,  or  other,  I  said  to  my- 


EXTERTAIXING   AN   AXGEL. 


IN    THE    EMPIRE    OF    MOROCCO.  75 

self,  with  withering  sarcasm,  "  Oh,  certainly ;  you  know  how 
to  put  on  kid  gloves,  don't  you  ? — a  self-complacent  ass,  ready 
to  be  flattered  out  of  your  senses  by  every  petticoat  that 
chooses  to  take  the  trouble  to  do  it !" 

The  silence  of  the  boys  annoyed  me.  Finally,  Dan  said, 
musingly : 

"  Some  gentlemen  don't  know  how  to  put  on  kid  gloves  at 
all ;  but  some  do." 

And  the  doctor  said  (to  the  moon,  I  thought,) 

u  Bat  it  is  always  easy  to  tell  when  a  gentleman  is  used  to 
putting  on  kid  gloves." 

Dan  solilopuized,  after  a  pause : 

"  Ah,  yes ;  there  is  a  grace  about  it  that  only  comes  with 
long,  very  long  practice." 

"  Yes,  indeed,  I've  noticed  that  when  a  man  hauls  on  a  kid 
glove  like  he  was  dragging  a  cat  out  of  an  ash-hole  by  the 
tail,  he  understands  putting  on  kid  gloves ;  he's  had  ex — 

"  Boys,  enough  of  a  thing  's  enough !  You  think  you  are 
very  smart,  I  suppose,  but  I  don't.  And  if  you  go  and  tell 
any  of  those  old  gossips  in  the  ship  about  this  thing,  I'll  never 
forgive  you  for  it ;  that 's  all." 

They  let  me  alone  then,  for  the  time  being.  We  always  let 
each  other  alone  in  time  to  prevent  ill  feeling  from  spoiling  a 
joke.  But  they  had  bought  gloves,  too,  as  I  did.  We  threw 
all  the  purchases  away  together  this  morning.  They  were 
coarse,  unsubstantial,  freckled  all  over  with  broad  yellow 
splotches,  and  could  neither  stand  wear  nor  public  exhibition. 
We  had  entertained  an  angel  unawares,  but  we  did  not  take 
her  in.  She  did  that  for  us. 

Tangier !  A  tribe  of  stalwart  Moors  are  wading  into  the 
sea  to  carry  us  ashore  on  their  backs  from  the  small  boats. 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

THIS  is  royal !  Let  those  who  went  up  through  Spain 
make  the  best  of  it — these  dominions  of  the  Emperor  of 
Morocco  suit  our  little  party  well  enough.  We  have  had 
enough  of  Spain  at  Gibraltar  for  the  present.  Tangier  is  the 
spot  we  have  been  longing  for  all  the  time.  Elsewhere  we 
have  found  foreign-looking  things  and  foreign-looking  people, 
but  always  with  things  and  people  intermixed  that  we  were 
familiar  with,  before,  and  so  the  novelty  of  the  situation  lost  a 
deal  of  its  force.  We  wanted  something  thoroughly  and  un 
compromisingly  foreign — foreign  from  top  to  bottom — foreign 
from  centre  to  circumference — foreign  inside  and  outside  and 
all  around — nothing  any  where  about  it  to  dilute  its  foreign- 
ness — nothing  to  remind  us  of  any  other  people  or  any  other 
land  under  the  sun.  And  lo !  in  Tangier  we  have  found  it. 
Here  is  not  the  slightest  thing  that  ever  we  have  seen  save  in 
pictures — and  we  always  mistrusted  the  pictures  before.  We 
can  not  any  more.  The  pictures  used  to  seem  exaggerations 
— they  seemed  too  weird  and  fanciful  for  reality.  But  behold, 
they  were  not  wild  enough — they  were  not  fanciful  enough— 
they  have  not  told  half  the  story.  Tangier  is  a  foreign  land 
if  ever  there  wras  one ;  and  the  true  spirit  of  it  can  never  be 
found  in  any  book  save  the  Arabian  lights.  Here  are  no 
white  men  visible,  yet  swarms  of  humanity  are  all  about  us. 
Here  is  a  packed  and  jammed  city  inclosed  in  a  massive  stone 
wall  which  is  more  than  a  thousand  years  old.  All  the  houses 
nearly  are  one  and  two-story  ;  made  of  thick  walls  of  stone ; 
plastered  outside ;  square  as  a  dry-goods  box ;  flat  as  a  floor  on 


ORIENTAL     WONDERS. 


77 


top ;  no  cornices ;  whitewashed  all  over — a  crowded  city  of 
snowy  tombs !  And  the  doors  are  arched  with  the  peculiar 
arch  we  see  in  Moorish  pictures ;  the  floors  are  laid  in  vari 
colored  diamond-flags ;  in  tesselated  many-colored  porcelain 
squares  wrought  in  the  furnaces  of  Fez  ;  in  red  tiles  arid  broad 
bricks  that  time  can  not  wear ;  there  is  no  furniture  in  the 


VIEW    OF   A    STREET    IN    TANGIER. 


rooms  (of  Jewish  dwellings)  save  divans — what  there  is  in 
Moorish  ones  no  man  may  know ;  within  their  sacred  walls  no 
Christian  dog  can  enter.  And  the  streets  are  oriental — some 
of  them  three  feet  wide,  some  six,  but  only  two  that  are  over 
a  dozen  ;  a  man  can  blockade  the  most  of  them  by  extending 
his  body  across  them.  Isn't  it  an  oriental  picture  ? 

There  are  stalwart  Bedouins  of  the  desert  here,  and  stately 
Moors,  proud  of  a  history  that  goes  back  to  the  night  of  time ; 
and  Jews,  whose  fathers  fled  hither  centuries  upon  centuries 
ago;  and  swarthy  Eiflians  from  the  mountains — born  cut- 


78  A     FUNNY     TOWN. 

throats — and  original,  genuine  negroes,  as  black  as  Moses  ;  and 
howling  dervishes,  and  a  hundred  breeds  of  Arabs — all  sorts 
and  descriptions  of  people  that  are  foreign  and  curious  to  look 
upon. 

And  their  dresses  are  strange  beyond  all  description.  Here 
is  a  bronzed  Moor  in  a  prodigious  white  turban,  curiously  em 
broidered  jacket,  gold  and  crimson  sash,  of  many  folds, 
wrapped  round  and  round  his  waist,  trowsers  that  only  come 
a  little  below  his  knee,  and  yet  have  twenty  yards  of  stuff  in 
them,  ornamented  scimetar,  bare  shins,  stockingless  feet,  yellow 
slippers,  and  gun  of  preposterous  length — a  mere  soldier  ! — I 
thought  he  was  the  Emperor  at  least.  And  here  are  aged 
Moors  with  flowing  white  beards,  and  long  white  robes  with 
vast  cowls ;  and  Bedouins  with  long,  cowled,  striped  cloaks, 
and  negroes  and  Riffians  with  heads  clean-shaven,  except  a 
kinky  scalp-lock  back  of  the  ear,  or  rather  up  on  the  after 
corner  of  the  skull,  and  all  sorts  of  barbarians  in  all  sorts  of 
weird  costumes,  and  all  more  or  less  ragged.  And  here  are 
Moorish  women  who  are  enveloped  from  head  to  foot  in  coarse 
white  robes  and  whose  sex  can  only  be  determined  by  the  fact 
that  they  only  leave  one  eye  visible,  and  never  look  at  men  of 
their  own  race,  or  are  looked  at  by  them  in  public.  Here  are 
five  thousand  Jews  in  blue  gaberdines,  sashes  about  their 
waists,  slippers  upon  their  feet,  little  skull-caps  upon  the 
backs  of  their  heads,  hair  combed  down  on  the  forehead,  and 
cut  straight  across  the  middle  of  it  from  side  to  side — the  self 
same  fashion  their  Tangier  ancestors  have  worn  for  I  don't 
know  how  many  bewildering  centuries.  Their  feet  and  ankles 
are  bare.  Their  noses  are  all  hooked,  and  hooked  alike.  They 
all  resemble  each  other  so  much  that  one  could  almost  believe 
they  were  of  one  family.  Their  women  are  plump  and  pretty, 
and  do  smile  upon  a  Christian  in  a  way  which  is  in  the  last 
degree  comforting. 

What  a  funny  old  town  it  is !  It  seems  like  profanation  to 
laugh,  and  jest,  and  bandy  the  frivolous  chat  of  our  day  amid 
its  hoary  relics.  Only  the  stately  phraseology  and  the  meas 
ured  speech  of  the  sons  of  the  Prophet  are  suited  to  a  vener- 


A     CRADLE     OF     ANTIQUITY.  79 

able  antiquity  like  this.  Here  is  a  crumbling  wall  that  was 
old  when  Columbus  discovered  America  ;  was  old  when  Peter 
the  Hermit  roused  the  knightly  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  to 
arm  for  the  first  Crusade  ;  was  old  when  Charlemagne  and  his 
paladins  beleaguered  enchanted  castles  and  battled  with  giants 
and  genii  in  the  fabled  days  of  the  olden  time  ;  was  old  when 
Christ  and  his  disciples  walked  the  earth  ;  stood  where  it 
stands  to-day  when  the  lips  of  Memnon  were  vocal,  and  men 
bought  and  sold  in  the  streets  of  ancient  Thebes  ! 

The  Phoenicians,  the  Carthagenians,  the  English,  Moors, 
Romans,  all  have  battled  for  Tangier  —  all  have  won  it  and 
lost  it.  Here  is  a  ragged,  oriental-looking  negro  from  some 
desert  place  in  interior  Africa,  filling  his  goat-skin  with  water 
from  a  stained  and  battered  fountain  built  by  the  Romans 
twelve  hundred  years  ago.  Yonder  is  a  ruined  arch  of  a  bridge 
built  by  Julius  Caesar  nineteen  hundred  years  ago.  Men  who 
had  seen  the  infant  Saviour  in  the  Virgin's  arms,  have  stood 
upon  it,  may  be. 

Near  it  are  the  ruins  of  a  dock-yard  where  Caesar  repaired 
his  ships  and  loaded  them  with  grain  when  he  invaded  Britain, 
fifty  years  before  the  Christian  era. 

Here,  under  the  quiet  stars,  these  old  streets  seem  thronged 
with  the  phantoms  of  forgotten  ages.  My  eyes  are  resting 
upon  a  spot  where  stood  a  monument  which  was  seen  and 
described  by  Roman  historians  less  than  two  thousand  years 
ago,  whereon  was  inscribed  : 


ABE  THE  CANAANITES.  WE  ARE  THEY  THAT  HAVE 
BEEN  DRIVEN  OUT  OF  THE  LAND  OF  CANAAN  BY  THE  JEWISH 

ROBBER,    JOSHUA." 

Joshua  drove  them  out,  and  they  came  here.  Not  many 
leagues  from  here  is  a  tribe  of  Jews  whose  ancestors  fled 
thither  after  an  unsuccessful  revolt  against  King  David,  and 
these  their  descendants  are  still  under  a  ban  and  keep  to  them 
selves. 

Tangier  has  been  mentioned  in  history  for  three  thousand 
years.  And  it  was  a  town,  though  a  queer  one,  when  Her- 


80  STOKES     AND     MERCHANTS. 

cules,  clad  in  his  lion-skin,  landed  here,  four  thousand  years 
ago.  In  these  streets  he  met  Anitus,  the  king  of  the  country, 
and  brained  him  with  his  club,  "Vhich  was  the  fashion  among 
gentlemen  in  those  days.  The  people  of  Tangier  (called 
Tingis,  then,)  lived  in  the  rudest  possible  huts,  and  dressed  in 
skins  and  carried  clubs,  and  were  as  savage  as  the  wild  beasts 
they  were  constantly  obliged  to  war  with.  But  they  were  a 
gentlemanly  race,  and  did  no  work.  They  lived  on  the  natural 
products  of  the  land.  Their  king's  country  residence  was  at 
the  famous  Garden  of  liesperides,  seventy  miles  down  the 
coast  from  here.  The  garden,  with  its  golden  apples,  (oranges,) 
is  gone  now — no  vestige  of  it  remains.  Antiquarians  concede 
that  such  a  personage  as  Hercules  did  exist  in  ancient  times, 
and  agree  that  he  was  an  enterprising  and  energetic  man,  but 
decline  to  believe  him  a  good,  bona  fide  god,  because  that 
would  be  unconstitutional. 

Down  here  at  Cape  Spartel  is  the  celebrated  cave  of  Her 
cules,  where  that  hero  took  refuge  when  he  was  vanquished 
and  driven  out  of  the  Tangier  country.  It  is  full  of  inscrip 
tions  in  the  dead  languages,  which  fact  makes  me  think  Her 
cules  could  not  have  traveled  much,  else  he  would  not  have 
kept  a  journal. 

Five  days'  journey  from  here — say  two  hundred  miles — are 
the  ruins  of  an  ancient  city,  of  whose  history  there  is  neither 
record  nor  tradition.  And  yet  its  arches,  its  columns,  and  its 
statues,  proclaim  it  to  have  been  built  by  an  enlightened 
race. 

The  general  size  of  a  store  in  Tangier  is  about  that  of  an 
ordinary  shower-bath  in  a  civilized  land.  The  Mohammedan 
merchant,  tinman,  shoemaker,  or  vendor  of  trifles,  sits  cross- 
legged  on  the  floor,  and  reaches  after  any  article  you  may  want 
to  buy.  You  can  rent  a  whole  block  of  these  pigeon-holes  for 
fifty  dollars  a  month.  The  market  people  crowd  the  market 
place  with  their  baskets  of  figs,  dates,  melons,  apricots,  etc., 
and  among  them  file  trains  of  laden  asses,  not  much  larger,  if 
any,  than  a  Newfoundland  dog.  The  scene  is  lively,  is  pic 
turesque,  and  smells  like  a  police  court.  The  Jewish  money- 


WE     BECOME     WEALTHY. 


81 


s 


CHANGE    FOR   A    NAPOLEON. 


changers  have  their  dens  close  at  hand ;  and  all  day  long  are 
counting  bronze  coins  and  transferring  them  from  one  bushel 

basket  to  another.  They 
don't  coin  much  money 
nowT-a-days,  I  think.  I  saw 
none  but  what  was  dated 
four  or  five  hundred  years 
back,  and  was  badly  worn 
and  battered.  These  coins 
are  not  very  valuable. 
Jack  went  out  to  get  a 
Napoleon  changed,  so  as 
"JJ  to  have  money  suited  to 
the  general  cheapness  of 
things,  and  came  back  and 
said  he  had  "  swamped  the 
bank ;  had  bought  eleven 
quarts  of  coin,  and  the 
head  of  the  firm  had  gone 
on  the  street  to  negotiate  for  the  balance  of  the  change."  I 
bought  nearly  half  a  pint  of  their  money  for  a  shilling  myself. 
I  am  not  proud  on  account  of  having  so  much  money,  th6ugh. 
I  care  nothing  for -wealth. 

The  Moors  have  some  small  silver  coins,  and  also  some 
silver  slugs  worth,  a  dollar  each.  The  latter  are  exceedingly 
scarce — so  much  so  that  when  poor  ragged  Arabs  see  one  they 
beg  to  be  allowed  to  kiss  it. 

They  have  also  a  small  gold  coin  wrorth  two  dollars.  And 
that  reminds  me  of  something.  When  Morocco  is  in  a  state 
of  war,  Arab  couriers  carry  letters  through  the  country,  and 
charge  a  liberal  postage.  Every  now  and  then  they  fall  into 
the  hands  of  marauding  bands  and  get  robbed.  Therefore, 
warned  by  experience,  as  soon  as  they  have  collected  two  dol 
lars'  worth  of  money  they  exchange  it  for  one  of  those  little 
gold  pieces,  and  when  robbers  come  upon  them,  swallow  it. 
The  stratagem  was  good  while  it  was  unsuspected,  but  after 
that  the  marauders  simply  gave  the  sagacious  United  States 
mail  an  emetic  and  sat  down  to  wait. 

6 


82  CURIOUS     REVENUE     SYSTEM. 

The  Emperor  of  Morocco  is  a  soulless  despot,  and  the  great 
officers  under  him  are  despots  on  a  smaller  scale.  There  is  no 
regular  system  of  taxation,  but  when  the  Emperor  or  the 
Bashaw  want  money,  they  levy  on  some  rich  man,  and  he  has 
to  furnish  the  cash  or  go  to  prison.  Therefore,  few  men  in 
Morocco  dare  to  be  rich.  It  is  too  dangerous  a  luxury.  Vanity 
occasionally  leads  a  man  to  display  wealth,  but  sooner  or  later 
the  Emperor  trumps  up  a  charge  against  him — any  sort  of  one 
will  do — and  contiscates  Ins  property.  Of  course,  there  are 
many  rich  men  in  the  empire,  but  their  money  is  buried,  and 
they  dress  in  rags  and  counterfeit  poverty.  Every  now  and 
then  the  Emperor  imprisons  a  man  who  is  suspected  of  the 
crime  of  bein^  rich,  and  makes  things  so  uncomfortable  for 
him  that  he  is  forced  to  discover  where  he  has  hidden  his 
money. 

Moors  and  Jews  sometimes  place  themselves  under  the  pro 
tection  of  the  foreign  consuls,  and  then  they  can  flout  their 
riches  in  the  Emperor's  face  with  impunity. 


CHAPTEE   IX. 

ABOUT  the  first  adventure  we  had  yesterday  afternoon, 
after  landing  here,  came  near  finishing  that  heedless 
Blucher.  We  had  just  mounted  some  mules  and  asses, 
and  started  out  under  the  guardianship  of  the  stately, 
the  princely,  the  magnificent  Hadji  Mohammed  Lamarty, 
(may  his  tribe  increase !)  when  we  came  upon  a  fine  Moorish 
mosque,  with  tall  tower,  rich  with  checker-work  of  many- 
colored  porcelain,  and  every  part  and  portion  of  the  edifice 
adorned  with  the  quaint  architecture  of  the  Alhambra,  and 
Blucher  started  to  ride  into  the  open  door-way.  A  startling 
"Hi-hiP  from  our  camp-followers,  and  a  loud  "Halt!"  from 
an  English  gentleman  in  the  party  checked  the  adventurer, 
and  then  we  were  informed  that  so  dire  a  profanation  is  it  for 
a  Christian  dog  to  set  foot  upon  the  sacred  threshold  of  a 
Moorish  mosque,  that  no  amount  of  purification  can  ever 
make  it  fit  for  the  faithful  to  pray  in  again.  Had  Blucher 
succeeded  in  entering  the  place,  he  would  no  doubt  have  been 
chased  through  the  town  and  stoned ;  and  the  time  has  been, 
and  not  many  years  ago  either,  when  a  Christian  would  have 
been  most  ruthlessly  slaughtered,  if  captured  in  a  mosque. 
"We  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  handsome  tesselated  pavements 
within,  and  of  the  devotees  performing  their  ablutions  at  the 
fountains ;  but  even  that  we  took  that  glimpse  was  a  thing  not 
relished  by  the  Moorish  bystanders. 

Some  years  ago  the  clock  in  the  tower  of  the  mosque  got 
out  of  order.  The  Moors  of  Tangier  have  so  degenerated  that 
it  has  been  long  since  there  was  an  artificer  among  them 


84:  MOORISH    PUNISHMENTS    FOR    CRIME. 

capable  of  curing  so  delicate  a  patient  as  a  debilitated  clock. 
The  great  men  of  the  city  met  in  solemn  conclave  to  consider 
how  the  difficulty  was  to  be  met.  They  discussed  the  matter 
thoroughly  but  arrived  at  no  solution.  Finally,  a  patriarch 
arose  and  said: 

"  Oh,  children  of  the  Prophet,  it  is  known  unto  you  that  a 
Portuguee  dog  of  a  Christian  clock-mender  pollutes  the  city  of 
Tangier  with  his  presence.  Ye  know,  also,  that  when  mosques 
are  builded,  asses  bear  the  stones  and  the  cement,  and  cross 
the  sacred  threshold.  Now,  therefore,  send  the  Christian  dog 
on  all  fours,  and  barefoot,  into  the  holy  place  to  mend  the 
clock,  and  let  him  go  as  an  ass !" 

And  in  that  way  it  was  done.  Therefore,  if  Blucher  ever 
sees  the  inside  of  a  mosque,  he  will  have  to  cast  aside  his 
humanity  and  go  in  his  natural  character.  AVe  visited  the 
jail,  and  found  Moorish  prisoners  making  mats  and  baskets. 
(This  thing  of  utilizing  crime  savors  of  civilization.)  Murder 
is  punished  with  death.  A  short  time  ago,  three  murderers 
were  taken  beyond  the  city  walls  and  shot.  Moorish  guns  are 
not  good,  and  neither  are  Moorish  marksmen.  In  this  in 
stance,  they  set  up  the  poor  criminals  at  long  range,  like  so 
many  targets,  and  practiced  on  them — kept  them  hopping 
about  and  dodging  bullets  for  half  an  hour  before  thqy  man 
aged  to  drive  the  centre. 

When  a  man  steals  cattle,  they  cut  off  his  right  hand  and 
left  leg,  and  nail  them  up  in  the  market-place  as  a  warning  to 
every  body.  Their  surgery  is  not  artistic.  They  slice  around 
the  bone  a  little ;  then  break  off  the  limb.  Sometimes  the 
patient  gets  well ;  but,  as  a  general  thing,  he  don't.  How 
ever,  the  Moorish  heart  is  stout.  The  Moors  were  always 
brave.  These  criminals  undergo  the  fearful  operation  without 
a  wince,  without  a  tremor  of  any  kind,  without  a  groan  !  No 
amount  of  suffering  can  bring  down  the  pride  of  a  Moor,  or 
make  him  shame  his  dignity  with  a  cry. 

Here,  marriage  is  contracted  by  the  parents  of  the  parties 
to  it.  There  are  no  valentines,  no  stolen  interviews,  no  riding 
out,  no  courting  in  dim  parlors,  no  lovers'  quarrels  and  recon- 


THREE  SUNDAYS  IN  A  WEEK.          85 

ciliations — no  nothing  that  is  proper  to  approaching  matri 
mony.  The  young  man  takes  the  girl  his  father  selects  for 
him,  marries  her,  and  after  that  she  is  unveiled,  and  he  sees 
her  for  the  first  time.  If,  after  due  acquaintance,  she  suits 
him,  he  retains  her ;  but  if  he  suspects  her  purity,  he  bundles 
her  back  to  her  father ;  if  he  finds  her  diseased,  the  same ; 
or  if.  after  just  and  reasonable  time  is  allowed  her,  she  neg 
lects  to  bear  children,  back  she  goes  to  the  home  of  her  child 
hood. 

Mohammedans  here,  who  can  afford  it,  keep  a  good  many 
wives  on  hand.  They  are  called  wives,  though  I  believe  the 
Koran  only  allows  four  genuine  wives — the  rest  are  concu 
bines.  The  Emperor  of  Morocco  don't  know  how  many 
wives  he  has,  but  thinks  he  has  five  hundred.  However,  that 
is  near  enough — a  dozen  or  so,  one  way  or  the  other,  don't 
matter. 

Even  the  Jews  in  the  interior  have  a  plurality  of  wives. 

I  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  faces  of  several  Moorish 
women,  (for  they  are  only  human,  and  will  expose  their  faces 
for  the  admiration  of  a  Christian  dog  when  no  male  Moor 
is  by,)  and  I  am  full  of  veneration  for  the  wisdom  that  leads 
them  to  cover  up  such  atrocious  ugliness. 

They  carry  their  children  at  their  backs,  in  a  sack,  like 
other  savages  the  world  over. 

Many  of  the  negroes  are  held  in  slavery  by  the  Moors.  But 
the  moment  a  female  slave  becomes  her  master's  concubine 
her  bonds  are  broken,  and  as  soon  as  a  male  slave  can  read  the 
first  chapter  of  the  Koran  (which  contains  the  creed,)  he  can 
no  longer  be  held  in  bondage. 

They  have  three  Sundays  a  week  in  Tangier.  The  Moham 
medan's  comes  on  Friday,  the  Jew's  on  Saturday,  and  that  of 
the  Christian  Consuls  on  Sunday.  The  Jews  are  the  most 
radical.  The  Moor  goes  to  his  mosque  about  noon  on  his 
Sabbath,  as  on  any  other  day,  removes  his  shoes  at  the  door, 
performs  his  ablutions,  makes  his  salaams,  pressing  his  fore 
head  to  the  pavement  time  and  again,  says  his  prayers,  and 
goes  back  to  his  work. 


86     SHARP   PRACTICE   OF   MOHAMMEDAN   PILGRIMS. 

But  the  Jew  shuts  up  shop ;  will  not  touch  copper  or  bronze 
money  at  all ;  soils  his  lingers  with  nothing  meaner  than  silver 
and  gold ;  attends  the  synagogue  devoutly ;  will  not  cook  or 
have  any  thing  to  do  with  tire ;  and  religiously  refrains  from 
embarking  in  any  enterprise. 

The  Moor  who  has  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca  is  entitled 
to  high  distinction.  Men  call  him  Hadji,  and  he  is  thence 
forward  a  great  personage.  Hundreds  of  Moors  come  to 
Tangier  every  year,  and  embark  for  Mecca.  They  go  part  of 
the  way  in  English  steamers ;  and  the  ten  or  twelve  dollars 
they  pay  for  passage  is  about  all  the  trip  costs.  They  take  with 
them  a  quantity  of  food,  and  when  the  commissary  department 
fails  they  "  skirmish,"  as  Jack  terms  it  in  his  sinful,  slangy 
way.  From  the  time  they  leave  till  they  get  home  again, 
they  never  wash,  either  on  land  or  sea.  They  are  usually 
gone  from  five  to  seven  months,  and  as  they  do  not  change 
their  clothes  during  all  that  time,  they  are  totally  unfit  for  the 
drawing-room  when  they  get  back. 

Many  of  them  have  to  rake  and  scrape  a  long  time  to 
gather  together  the  ten  dollars  their  steamer  passage  costs; 
and  when  one  of  them  gets  back  he  is  a  bankrupt  forever 
after.  Few  Moors  can  ever  build  up  their  fortunes  again  in 
one  short  lifetime,  after  so  reckless  an  outlay.  In  order  to 
confine  the  dignity  of  Hadji  to  gentlemen  of  patrician  blood 
and  possessions,  the  Emperor  decreed  that  no  man  should 
make  the  pilgrimage  save  bloated  aristocrats  who  were  worth 
a  hundred  dollars  in  specie.  But  behold  how  iniquity  can 
circumvent  the  law !  For  a  consideration,  the  Jewish  money 
changer  lends  the  pilgrim  one  hundred  dollars  long  enough 
for  him  to  swear  himself  through,  and  then  receives  it  back 
before  the  ship  sails  out  of  the  harbor ! 

Spain  is  the  only  nation  the  Moors  fear.  The  reason  is, 
that  Spain  sends  her  heaviest  ships  of  war  and  her  loudest 
guns  to  astonish  these  Moslems ;  while  America,  and  other 
nations,  send  only  a  little  contemptible  tub  of  a  gun-boat  occa 
sionally.  The  Moors,  like  other  savages,  learn-  by  what  they 
see ;  not  what  they  hear  or  read.  We  have  great  fleets  in  the 


CATS    FOR    DINNER.  87 

Mediterranean,  but  they  seldom  touch  at  African  ports.  The 
Moors  have  a  small  opinion  of  England,  France,  and  America, 
and  put  their  representatives  to  a  deal  of  red  tape  cir 
cumlocution  before  they  grant  them  their  common  rights,  let 
alone  a  favor.  But  the  moment  the  Spanish  Minister 
makes  a  demand,  it  is  acceded  to  at  once,  whether  it  be  just 
or  not. 

Spain  chastised  the  Moors  five  or  six  years  ago,  about  a  dis 
puted  piece'  of  property  opposite  Gibraltar,  and  captured  the 
city  of  Tetouan.  She  compromised  on  an  augmentation  of 
her  territory  ;  twenty  million  dollars  indemnity  in  money ;  and 
peace.  And  then  she  gave  up  the  city.  But  she  never  gave 
it  up  until  the  Spanish  soldiers  had  eaten  up  all  the  cats. 
They  would  not  compromise  as  long  as  the  cats  held  out. 
Spaniards  are  very  fond  of  cats.  On  the  contrary,  the  Moors 
reverence  cats  as  something  sacred.  So  the  Spaniards  touched 
them  on  a  tender  point  that  time.  Their  unfeline  conduct  in 
eating  up  all  the  Tetouan  cats  aroused  a  hatred  toward  them  in 
the  breasts  of  the  Moors,  to  which  even  the  driving  them  out 
of  Spain  was  tame  and  passionless.  Moors  and  Spaniards  are 
foes  forever  now.  France  had  a  Minister  here  once  who  em 
bittered  the  nation  against  him  in  the  most  innocent  way. 
He  killed  a  couple  of  battalions  of  cats  (Tangier  is  full  of 
them,)  and  made  a  parlor  carpet  out  of  their  hides.  He  made 
his  carpet  in  circles — first  a  circle  of  old  gray  tom-cats,  with 
their  tails  all  pointing  towards  the  centre;  then  a  circle  of 
yellow  cats ;  next  a  circle  of  black  cats  and  a  circle  of  wrhite 
ones ;  then  a  circle  of  all  sorts  of  cats ;  and,  finally,  a  centre 
piece  of  assorted  kittens.  It  was  very  beautiful;  but  the 
Moors  curse  his  memory  to  this  day. 

When  we  went  to  call  on  our  American  Consul-General, 
to-day,  I  noticed  that  all  possible  games  for  parlor  amusement 
seemed  to  be  represented  on  his  centre-tables.  I  thought  that 
hinted  at  lonesomeness.  The  idea  was  correct.  His  is  the 
only  American  family  in  Tangier.  There  are  many  foreign 
Consuls  in  this  place ;  but  much  visiting  is  not  indulged  in. 
Tangier  is  clear  out  of  the  world ;  and  what  is  the  use  of 


88 


THE  CONSUL'S  FAMILY. 


visiting  when  people  have  nothing  on  earth  to  talk  about? 
There  is  none.  So  each  Consul's  family  stays  at  home 
chiefly,  and  amuses  itself  as  best  it  can.  Tangier  is  full  of 
interest  for  one  day,  but  after  that  it  is  a  weary  prison.  The 
Consul-General  has  been  here  five  years,  and  has  got  enough 
of  it  to  do  him  for  a  century,  and  is  going  home  shortly.  His 
family  seize  upon  their  letters  and  papers  when  the  mail 
arrives,  read  them  over  and  over  again  for  two  days  or  three, 
talk  them  over  and  over  again  for  two  or  three  more,  till  they 
wear  them  out,  and  after  that,  for  days  together,  they  eat  and 
drink  and  sleep,  and  ride  out  over  the  same  old  road,  and  see 
the  same  old  tiresome  things  that  even  decades  of  centu 
ries  have  scarcely  changed,  and  say  never  a  single  word ! 


THE  CONSULS'  FAMILY. 

They  have  literally  nothing  whatever  to  talk  about.  The  ar 
rival  of  an  American  man-of-war  is  a  god-send  to  them. 
"  Oh,  Solitude,  where  are  the  charms  which  sages  have  seen  in 
thy  face  ?"  It  is  the  completest  exile  that  I  can  conceive  of. 
I  would  seriously  recommend  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  that  when  a  man  commits  a  crime  so  heinous 


FAREWELL     TO     TANGIER.  89 

that  the  law  provides  no  adequate  punishment  for  it,  they 
make  him  Consul-General  to  Tangier. 

I  am  glad  to  have  seen  Tangier — the  second  oldest 
town  in  the  world.  But  I  am  ready  to  bid  it  good  bye,  I 
believe. 

"We  shall  go  hence  to  Gibraltar  this  evening  or  in  the  morn 
ing  ;  and  doubtless  the  Quaker  City  will  sail  from  that  port 
within  the  next  forty-eight  hours. 


CHAPTEE   X. 


WE  passed  the  Fourth  of  July  on  board  the  Quaker  City, 
in  mid-ocean.  It  was  in  all  respects  a  characteristic 
Mediterranean  day — faultlessly  beautiful.  A  cloudless  sky  ;  a 
refreshing  summer  wind ;  a  radiant  sunshine  that  glinted 
cheerily  from  dancing  wavelets  instead  of  crested  mountains 
of  water ;  a  sea  beneath  us  that  wras  so  wonderfully  blue,  so 
richly,  brilliantly  blue,  that  it  overcame  the  dullest  sensibilities 
with  the  spell  of  its  fascination. 

They  even  have  fine  sunsets  on  the  Mediterranean — a  thing 
that  is  certainly  rare  in  most  quarters  of  the  globe.  The  even 
ing  we  sailed  away  from  Gibraltar,  that  hard-featured  rock 
was  swimming  in  a  creamy  mist  so  rich,  so  soft,  so  enchant- 
ingly  vague  and  dreamy,  that  even  the  Oracle,  that  serene, 
that  inspired,  that  overpowering  humbug,  scorned  the  dinner- 
gong  and  tarried  to  worship  ! 

He  said:  "Well,  that's  gorgis,  ain't  it!  They  don't  have 
none  of  them  things  in  our  parts,  do  they  ?  I  consider  that 
them  effects  is  on  account  of  the  superior  refragability,  as  you 
may  say,  of  the  sun's  diramic  combination  with  the  lymphatic 
forces  of  the  perihelion  of  Jubiter.  What  should  you  think  ?" 

"  Oh,  go  to  bed !"     Dan  said  that,  and  went  away. 

"  Oh,  yes,  it's  all  very  well  to  say  go  to  bed  when  a  man 
makes  an  argument  which  another  man  can't  answer.  Dan 
don't  never  stand  any  chance  in  an  argument  with  me.  And 
he  knows  it,  too.  What  should  you  say,  Jack  ?" 

"  Now  doctor,  don't  you  come  bothering  around  me  with 
that  dictionary  bosh.  I  don't  do  you  any  harm,  do  I  ?  Then 
you  let  me  alone." 


THE   ORACLE   IS   DELIVERED   OF  AN   OPINION.        91 


POET   LARIAT. 


"  He's  gone,  too.  Well,  them  fellows  have  all  tackled  the  old 
Oracle,  as  they  say,  but  the  old  man's  most  too  many  for  'em. 
May  be  the  Poet  Lariat  ain't  satisfied  with  them  deductions  ?" 

The  poet  replied  with  a  barbarous  rhyme,  and  went  below. 

"  Tears  that  he  can't 
qualify,  neither.  Well, 
I  didn't  expect  nothing 
out  of  him.  I  never  see 
one  of  them  poets  yet 
that  knowed  any  thing. 
He'll  go  down,  now, 
and  o'rind  out  about  four 

O 

reams  of  the  awfullest 
slush  about  that  old 
rock,  and  give  it  to  a 
consul,  or  a  pilot,  or  a 
nigger,  or  any  body  he 
comes  across  first  which 
he  can  impose  on.  Pity 
but  somebody'd  take  that  poor  old  lunatic  and  dig  all  that 
poetry  rubbage  out  of  him.  Why  can't  a  man  put  his  in 
tellect  onto  things  that's  some  value  ?  Gibbons,  and  Hippo- 
cratus,  and  Sarcophagus,  and  all  them  old  ancient  philosophers 
was  down  on  poets —  « 

"  Doctor,"  I  said,  "  you  are  going  to  invent  authorities,  now, 
and  I'll  leave  you,  too.  I  always  enjoy  your  conversation, 
notwithstanding  the  luxuriance  of  your  syllables,  when  the 
philosophy  you  offer  rests  on  your  own  responsibility ;  but 
when  you  begin  to  soar — when  you  begin  to  support  it  with 
the  evidence  of  authorities  who  are  the  creations  of  your  own 
fancy,  I  lose  confidence." 

That  was  the  way  to  flatter  the  doctor.  He  considered  it  a 
sort  of  acknowledgment  on  my  part  of  a  fear  to  argue  with 
him.  He  wTas  always  persecuting  the  passengers  with  abstruse 
propositions  framed  in  language  that  no  man  could  understand, 
and  they  endured  the  exquisite  torture  a  minute  or  two  and 
then  abandoned  the  field.  A  triumph  like  this,  over  half  a 


92  CELEBRATION     CEREMONIES. 

dozen  antagonists  was  sufficient  for  one  day ;  from  that  time 
forward  he  would  patrol  the  decks  beaming  blandly  upon  all 
comers,  and  so  tranquilly,  blissfully  happy ! 

But  I  digress.  The  thunder  of  our  two  brave  cannon  an 
nounced  the  Fourth  of  July,  at  daylight,  to  all  who  were 
awake.  But  many  of  us  got  our  information  at  a  later  hour, 
from  the  almanac.  All  the  flags  were  sent  .aloft,  except  half  a 
dozen  that  were  needed  to  decorate  portions  of  the  ship  below, 
and  in  a  short  time  the  vessel  assumed  a  holiday  appearance. 
During  the  morning,  meetings  were  held  and  all  manner  of 
committees  set  to  work  on  the  celebration  ceremonies.  In  the 
afternoon  the  ship's  company  assembled  aft,  on  deck,  under  the 
awnings;  the  flute,  the ' asthmatic  melodeon,  and  the  con 
sumptive  clarinet  crippled  the  Star  Spangled  Banner,  the  choir 
chased  it  to  cover,  and  George  came  in  with  a  peculiarly  lacer 
ating  screech  on  the  final  note  and  slaughtered  it.  Nobody 
mourned. 

We  carried  out  the  corpse  on  three  cheers  (that  joke  was  not 
intentional  and  I  do  not  indorse  it,)  and  then  the  President, 
throned  behind  a  cable-locker  with  a  national  flag  spread  over 
it,  announced  the  "  Keader,"  who  rose  up  and  read  that  same 
old  Declaration  of  Independence  which  we  have  all  listened  to 
so  often  without  paying  any  attention  to  what  it  said ;  and 
after  that  the  President  piped  the  Orator  of  the  Day  to  quar 
ters  and  he  made  that  same  old  speech  about  our  national 
greatness  which  we  so  religiously  believe  and  so  fervently  ap 
plaud.  Now  came  the  choir  into  court  again,  with  the  com 
plaining  instruments,  and  assaulted  Hail  Columbia ;  and  when 
victory  hung  wavering  in  the  scale,  George  returned  with  his 
dreadful  wild-goose  stop  turned  on  and  the  choir  won  of  course. 
A  minister  pronounced  the  benediction,  and  the  patriotic  little 
gathering  disbanded.  The  Fourth  of  July  was  safe,  as  far  as 
the  Mediterranean  was  concerned. 

At  dinner  in  the  evening,  a  well-written  original  poem  was 
recited  with  spirit  by  one  of  the  ship's  captains,  and  thirteen 
regular  toasts  were  washed  down  with  several  baskets  of  cham 
pagne.  The  speeches  were  bad — execrable,  almost  without 


THE    CAPTAIN'S    ELOQUENT   ADDRESS.        93 

exception.  In  fact,  without  any  exception,  but  one.  Capt. 
Duncan  made  a  good  speech ;  he  made  the  only  good  speech 
of  the  evening.  He  said  : 

"  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN  : — May  we  all  live  to  a  green  old 
age,  and  be  prosperous  and  happy.  Steward,  bring  up  another 
basket  of  champagne." 

It  was  regarded  as  a  very  able  effort. 

The  festivities,  so  to  speak,  closed  with  another  of  those 
miraculous  balls  on  the  promenade  deck.  We  were  not  used 
to  dancing  on  an  even  keel,  though,  and  it  was  only  a  ques 
tionable  success.  But  take  it  altogether,  it  was  a  bright,  cheer 
ful,  pleasant  Fourth. 

Toward  nightfall,  the  next  evening,  we  steamed  into  the 
great  artificial  harbor  of  this  noble  city  of  Marseilles,  and  saw 
the  dying  sunlight  gild  its  clustering  spires  and  ramparts,  and 
flood  its  leagues  of  environing  verdure  with  a  mellow  radiance 
that  touched  with  an  added  charm  the  white  villas  that  flecked  the 
landscape  far  and  near.  [Copyright  secured  according  to  law.] 

There  were  no  stages  out,  and  we  could  not  get  on  the  pier 
from  the  ship.  It  was  annoying.  We  were  full  of  enthusi 
asm — we  wanted  to  see  France !  Just  at  nightfall  our  party 
of  three  contracted  with  a  waterman  for  the  privilege  of  using 
his  boat  as  a  bridge — its  stern  was  at  our  companion  ladder  and 
its  bow  touched  the  pier.  We  got  in  and  the  fellow  backed 
out  into  the  harbor.  1  told  him  in  French  that  all  we  wanted 
was  to  walk  over  his  thwarts  and  step  ashore,  and  asked  him 
what  he  went  away  out  there  for  ?  lie  said  he  could  not  un 
derstand  me.  I  repeated.  Still,  he  could  not  understand. 
He  appeared  to  be  very  ignorant  of  French.  The  doctor  tried 
him,  but  he  could  not  understand  the  doctor.  I  asked  this 
boatman  to  explain  his  conduct,  which  he  did ;  and  then  I 
couldn't  understand  him.  Dan  said : 

u  Oh,  go  to  the  pier,  you  old  fool — that's  where  we  want  to  go  !" 

We  reasoned  calmly  with  Dan  that  it  was  useless  to  speak 
to  this  foreigner  in  English — that  he  had  better  let  us  conduct 
this  business  in  the  French  language  and  not  let  the  stranger 
see  how  uncultivated  he  was. 


94  "AVEZ-VOUS   DU    VIN?" 

"Well,  go  on,  go  on,"  he  said,  "don't  mind  me.  I  don't 
wish  to  interfere.  Only,  if  you  go  on  telling  him  in  your  kind 
of  French  he  never  will  find  out  where  we  want  to  go  to. 
That  is  what  I  think  about  it." 

We  rebuked  him  severely  for  this  remark,  and  said  we  never 
knew  an  ignorant  person  yet  but  was  prejudiced.  The  French 
man  spoke  again,  and  the  doctor  said : 

"  There,  now,  Dan,  he  says  he  is  going  to  allez  to  the  douain. 
Means  he  is  going  to  the  hotel.  Oh,  certainly — we  don't  know 
the  French  language." 

This  was  a  crusher,  as  Jack  would  say.  It  silenced  further 
criticism  from  the  disaffected  member.  We  coasted  past  the 
sharp  bows  of  a  navy  of  great  steamships,  and  stopped  at  last 
at  a  government  building  on  a  stone  pier.  It  was  easy  to  re 
member  then,  that  the  douain  was  the  custom-house,  and  not 
the  hotel.  We  did  not  mention  it,  however.  With  winning 
French  politeness,  the  officers  merely  opened  and  closed  our 
satchels,  declined  to  examine  our  passports,  and  sent  us  on  our 
way.  We  stopped  at  the  first  cafe"  we  came  to,  and  entered. 
An  old  woman  seated  us  at  a  table  and  waited  for  orders. 
The  doctor  said : 

"  Avez  vous  du  vin  ?" 

The  dame  looked  perplexed.  The  doctor  said  again,  with 
elaborate  distinctness  of  articulation : 

"  Avez-vous  du — vin  !" 

The  dame  looked  more  perplexed  than  before.     I  said  : 

"  Doctor,  there  is  a  flaw  in  your  pronunciation  somewhere. 
Let  me  try  her.  Madame,  avez-vous  du  vin  ?  It  isn't  any  use, 
doctor — take  the  witness." 

"Madame,  avez-vous  du  vin — on  fromage — pain — pickled 
pigs'  feet — beurre — des  cefs — du  benf- — horse-radish,  sour-crout, 
hog  and  hominy — any  thing,  any  thing  in  the  world  that  can 
stay  a  Christian  stomach !" 

She  said : 

"  Bless  you,  why  didn't  you  speak  English  before  ? — I  don't 
know  any  thing  about  your  plagued  French  !" 

The  humiliating  taunts  of  the  disaffected  member  spoiled 


FIRST     SUPPER     IN     FRANCE. 


95 


the  supper,  and  we  dispatched  it  in  angry  silence  and  got  away 
as  soon  as  we  could.  Here  we  were  in  beautiful  France — in  a 
vast  stone  house  of  quaint  architecture — surrounded  by  all 


X\ 


FIRST   SUPPER   IN    FRANCE. 


manner  of  curiously  worded  French  signs — stared  at  by 
strangely-habited,  bearded  French  people — every  thing  grad 
ually  and  surely  forcing  upon  us  the  coveted  consciousness  that 
at  last,  and  beyond  all  question  we  were  in  beautiful  France  and 
absorbing  its  nature  to  the  forgetfulness  of  every  thing  else, 
and  coming  to  feel  the  happy  romance  of  the  thing  in  all  its 
enchanting  delightfulness — and  to  think  of  this  skinny  veteran 
intruding  with  her  vile  English,  at  such  a  moment,  to  blow  the 
fair  vision  to  the  winds !  It  was  exasperating. 

We  set  out  to  find  the  centre  of  the  city,  inquiring  the  di 
rection  every  now  and  then.  "We  never  did  succeed  in  making 
any  body  understand  just  exactly  what  we  wanted,  and  neither 
did  we  ever  succeed  in  comprehending  just  exactly  what  they 


96 


LOST. — FOUND. 


POINTING. 


said  in  reply — but  then  they  always  pointed — they  always  did 
that,  and  we  bowed  politely  and  said  "Merci,  Monsieur,"  and 
so  it  was  a  blighting  triumph  over  the  disaffected  member, 

any  way.     He  was  restive  under 
these  victories  and  often  asked : 
"What  did  that  pirate  say?" 
"  Why,  he  told  us  which  way 
to  go,  to  find  the  Grand  Casino." 
"  Yes,  but  what  did  he  say?" 
"  Oh,  it  don't  matter  what  he 
said — we  understood  him.     These 
are  educated  people — not  like  that 
absurd  boatman." 

"Well,  I  wish  they  were  edu 
cated  enough  to  tell  a  man  a  di 
rection  that  goes  some  where — 
for  we've  been  going  around  in 
a  circle  for  an  hour — I've  passed 
this  same  old  drug  store  seven  times." 

We  said  it  was  a  low,  disreputable  falsehood,  (but  we 
knew  it  was  not.)  It  was  plain  that  it  would  not  do  to  pass 
that  drug  store  again,  though — we  might  go  on  asking  direc 
tions,  but  we  must  cease  from  following  finger-pointings  if  we 
hoped  to  check  the  suspicions  of  the  disaffected  member. 

A  long  walk  through  smooth,  asphaltum-paved  streets  bor 
dered  by  blocks  of  vast  new  mercantile  houses  of  cream-colored 
stone, — every  house  and  every  block  precisely  like  all  the  other 
houses  and  all  the  other  blocks  for  a  mile,  and  all  brilliantly 
lighted, — brought  us  at  last  to  the  principal  thoroughfare.  On 
every  hand  were  bright  colors,  flashing  constellations  of  gas- 
burners,  gaily  dressed  men  and  women  thronging  the  side 
walks — hurry,  life,  activity,  cheerfulness,  conversation  and 
laughter  every  where  !  We  found  the  Grand  Hotel  du  Louvre 
et  de  la  Paix,  and  wrote  down  who  we  were,  where  we  were 
born,  what  our  occupations  were,  the  place  we  came  from  last, 
whether  we  were  married  or  single,  how  we  liked  it,  how  old 
we  were,  where  we  were  bound  for  and  when  we  expected  to 


A     FRENCHY     SCENE.  97 

get  there,  and  a  great  deal  of  information  of  similar  import 
ance — all  for  the  benefit  of  the  landlord  and  the  secret  police. 
We  hired  a  guide  and  began  the  business  of  sight-seeing  im 
mediately.  That  first  night  on  French  soil  was  a  stirring  one. 
I  can  not  think  of  half  the  places  we  went  to,  or  what  we  par 
ticularly  saw ;  we  had  no  disposition  to  examine  carefully  into 
any  thing  at  all — we  only  wanted  to  glance  and  go — to  move, 
keep  mo v ing !  The  spirit  of  the  country  was  upon  us.  We 
sat  down,  finally,  at  a  late  hour,  in  the  great  Casino,  and  called 
for  unstinted  champagne.  It  is  so  easy  to  be  bloated  aristocrats 
where  it  costs  nothing  of  consequence !  There  were  about  five 
hundred  people  in  that  dazzling  place,  I  suppose,  though  the 
walls  being  papered  entirely  with  mirrors,  so  to  speak,  one  could 
not  really  tell  but  that  there  were  a  hundred  thousand. 
Young,  daintily  dressed  exquisites  and  young,  stylishly  dressed 
women,  and  also  old  gentlemen  and  old  ladies,  sat  in  couples 
and  groups  about  innumerable  marble-topped  tables,  and  ate 
fancy  suppers,  drank  wine  and  kept  up  a  chattering  din  of  con 
versation  that  was  dazing  to  the  senses.  There  was  a  stage 
at  the  far  end,  and  a  large  orchestra ;  and  every  now  and  then 
actors  and  actresses  in  preposterous  comic  dresses  came  out 
and  sang  the  most  extravagantly  funny  songs,  to  judge  by 
their  absurd  actions ;  but  that  audience  merely  suspended  its 
chatter,  stared  cynically,  and  never  once  smiled,  never  once 
applauded  !  I  had  always  thought  that  Frenchmen  were  ready 
to  laugh  at  any  thing. 

7 


CHAPTER  XI. 

WE  are  getting  foreignized  rapidly,  and  with  facility. 
We  are  getting  reconciled  to  halls  and  bed-chambers 
with  unhomelike  stone  floors,  and  no  carpets — floors  that  ring 
to  the  tread  of  one's  heels  with  a  sharpness  that  is  death  to 
sentimental  musing.  We  are  getting  used  to  tidy,  noiseless 
waiters,  who  glide  hither  and  thither,  and  hover  about  your 
back  and  your  elbows  like  butterflies,  quick  to  comprehend 
orders,  quick  to  fill  them  ;  thankful  for  a  gratuity  without  re 
gard  to  the  amount ;  and  always  polite — never  otherwise  than 
polite.  That  is  the  strangest  curiosity  yet — a  really  polite 
hotel  waiter  who  isn't  an  idiot.  We  are  getting  used  to  driv 
ing  right  into  the  central  court  of  the  hotel,  in  the  midst  of  a 
fragrant  circle  of  vines  and  flowers,  and  in  the  midst,  also,  of 
parties  of  gentlemen  sitting  quietly  reading  the  paper  and 
smoking.  We  are  getting  used  to  ice  frozen  by  artificial  pro 
cess  in  ordinary  bottles — the  only  kind  of  ice  they  have  here. 
We  are  getting  used  to  all  these  things;  but  we  are  not  getting 
used  to  carrying  our  own  soap.  We  are  sufficiently  civilized 
to  carry  our  own  combs  and  tooth-brushes ;  but  this  thing  of 
.having  to  ring  for  soap  every  time  we  wash  is  new  to  us,  and 
not  pleasant  at  all.  We  think  of  it  just  after  we  get  our 
heads  and  faces  thoroughly  wet,  or  just  when  we  think  we 
have  been  in  the  bath-tub  long  enough,  and  then,  of  course,  an 
annoying  delay  follows.  These  Marseillaise  make  Marseillaise 
hymns,  and  Marseilles  vests,  and  Marseilles  soap  for  all  the 
world ;  but  they  never  sing  their  hymns,  or  wear  their  vests, 
or  wash  with  .their  soap  themselves. 


RINGING    FOR    SOAP. 


99 


We  have  learned  to  go  through  the  lingering  routine  of  the 
table  d'hote  with  patience,  with  serenity,  with  satisfaction. 
We  take  soup ;  then 
wait  a  few  minutes 
for  the  fish ;  a  few 
minutes  more  and 
the  plates  are  chang 
ed,  and  the  roast 
beef  comes ;  another 
change  and  we  take 
peas;  change  again 
and  take  lentils ; 
change  and  take 
snail  patties  (I  pre 
fer  grasshoppers ;) 
change  and  take 
roast  chicken  and  sal 
ad  ;  then  strawberry 
pie  and  ice  cream; 
then  green  figs, 
pears,  oranges,  green 
almonds,  <fcc. ;  finally 
coffee.  Wine  with 

every  course,  of  course,  being  in  France.  With  such  a  cargo 
on  board,  digestion  is  a  slow  process,  and  we  must  sit  long  in 
the  cool  chambers  and  smoke — and  read  French  newspapers, 
which  have  a  strange  fashion  of  telling  a  perfectly  straight 
story  till  you  get  to  the  "  nub  "  of  it,  and  then  a  word  drops  in 
that  no  man  can  translate,  and  that  story  is  ruined.  An  em 
bankment  fell  on  some  Frenchmen  yesterday,  and  the  papers 
are  full  of  it  to-day — but  whether  those  sufferers  were  killed, 
or  crippled,  or  bruised,  or  only  scared,  is  more  than  I  can  pos 
sibly  make  out,  and  yet  I  would  just  give  any  thing  to  know. 

We  were  troubled  a  little  at  dinner  to-day,  by  the  conduct 
of  an  American,  who  talked  very  loudly  and  coarsely,  and 
laughed  boisterously  where  all  others  were  so  quiet  and  well- 
behaved.  He  ordered  wine  with  a  royal  flourish,  and  said : 


KINGING  FOE  SOAP. 


100 


"AN    AMERICAN,    SIR!" 


"  I  never  dine  without  wine,  sir,"  (which  was  a  pitiful  false 
hood,)  and  looked  around  upon  the  company  to  bask  in  the 
admiration  he  expected  to  find  in  their  faces.  All  these  airs 

in  a  land  where  they  would 
as  soon  expect  to  leave  the 
soup  out  of  the  bill  of  fare 
as  the  wine ! — in  a  land 
where  wine  is  nearly  as 
common  among  all  ranks 
as  water!  This  fellow 
said  :  "I  am  a  free-born 
sovereign,  sir,  an  Ameri 
can,  sir,  and  I  want  every 
body  to  know  it!"  He 
did  not  mention  that  he 
was  a  lineal  descendant  of 
Balaam's  ass ;  but  every 
body  knew  that  without 
his  telling  it. 

"We  have  driven  in  the  Prado — that  superb  avenue  bordered 
with  patrician  mansions  and  noble  shade-trees — and  have 
visited  the  Chateau  Boarely  and  its  curious  museum.  They 
showed  us  a  miniature  cemetery  there — a  copy  of  the 
first  graveyard  that  was  ever  in  Marseilles,  no  doubt.  The 
delicate  little  skeletons  were  lying  in  broken  vaults,  and  had 
their  household  gods  and  kitchen  utensils  with  them.  The 
original  of  this  cemetery  was  dug  up  in  the  principal  street  of 
the  city  a  few  years  ago.  It  had  remained  there,  only  twelve 
feet  under  ground,  for  a  matter  of  twenty-five  hundred  years, 
or  thereabouts.  Romulus  was  here  before  he  built  Rome,  and 
thought  something  of  founding  a  city  on  this  spot,  but  gave 
up  the  idea.  He  may  have  been  personally  acquainted  with 
some  of  these  Phoenicians  w^hose  skeletons  we  have  been  ex 
amining. 

In  the  great  Zoological  Gardens,  we  found  specimens  of  all 
the  animals  the  world  produces,  I  think,  including  a  drome 
dary,  a  monkey  ornamented  with  tufts  of  brilliant  blue  and 


THE   "PILGRIM"  BIRD. 


101 


carmine  hair — a  very  gorgeous  monkey  he  was — a  hippopot 
amus  from  the  Nile,  and  a  sort  of  tall,  long-legged  bird  with  a 
beak  like  a  powder-horn,  and  close-fitting  wings  like  the  tails 
of  a  dress  coat.  This  fellow  stood  up  with  his  eyes  shut  and 
his  shoulders  stooped  forward  a  little,  and  looked  as  if  he  had 
his  hands  under  his  coat  tails.  Such  tranquil  stupidity,  such 
supernatural  gravity,  such  self-righteousness,  and  such  ineffa 
ble  self-complacency  as  were  in  the  countenance  and  attitude 
of  that  gray-bodied,  dark-winged,  bald-headed,  and  pre 
posterously  uncomely  bird !  lie  was  so  ungainly,  so  pimply 
about  the  head,  so  scaly  about  the  legs ;  yet  so  serene,  so  un 
speakably  satisfied  !  He  was  the  most  comical  looking  creature 
that  can  be  imagined.  It 
was  good  to  hear  Dan  and 
the  doctor  laugh — such  nat 
ural  and  such  enjoyable 
laughter  had  not  been  heard 
among  our  excursionists 
since  our  ship  sailed  away 
from  America.  This  bird 
was  a  god-send  to  us,  and  I 
should  be  an  ingrate  if  I 
forgot  to  make  honorable 
mention  of  him  in  these 
pages.  Ours  was  a  pleas 
ure  excursion ;  therefore  we 
stayed  with  that  bird  an 
hour,  and  made  the  most  of 
him.  We  stirred  him  up 
occasionally,  but  he  only 
unclosed  an  eye  and  slowly 
closed  it  again,  abating  no 
jot  of  his  stately  piety  of  "TIIB  PILGRIM. 

demeanor  or  his  tremendous 

seriousness.  He  only  seemed  to  say,  "  Defile  not  Heaven's 
anointed  with  unsanctified  hands."  We  did  not  know  his 
name,  and  so  we  called  him  "  The  Pilgrim."  Dan  said : 


102  STRANGE    COMPANIONSHIP. 

"  All  he  wants  now  is  a  Plymouth  Collection." 
The  boon  companion  of  the  colossal  elephant  was  a  com 
mon  cat!  This  cat  had  a  fashion  of  climbing  up  the  ele 
phant's  hind  legs,  and  roosting  on  his  back.  She  would  sit 
up  there,  with  her  paws  curved  under  her  breast,  and  sleep  in 
the  sun  half  the  afternoon.  It  used  to  annoy  the  elephant  at 
first,  and  he  would  reach  up  and  take  her  down,  but  she  would 
go  aft  and  climb  up  again.  She  persisted  until  she  finally 
conquered  the  elephant's  prejudices,  and  now  they  are  insep 
arable  friends.  The  cat  plays  about  her  comrade's  forefeet  or 
his  trunk  often,  until  dogs  approach,  and  then  she  goes  aloft 
out  of  clanger.  The  elephant  has  annihilated  several  dogs 
lately,  that  pressed  his  companion  too  closely. 

We  hired  a  sail-boat  and  a  guide  and  made  an  excursion  to 
one  of  the  small  islands  in  the  harbor  to  visit  the  Castle  cl'If. 
This  ancient  fortress  has  a  melancholy  history.  It  has  been 
used  as  a  prison  for  political  offenders  for  two  or  three  hun 
dred  years,  and  its  dungeon  walls  are  scarred  with  the  rudely 
carved  names  of  many  and  many  a  captive  who  fretted  his 
life  away  here,  and  left  no  record  of  himself  but  these  sad 
epitaphs  wrought  with  his  own  hands.  How  thick  the  names 
were !  And  their  long-departed  owners  seemed  to  throng  the 
gloomy  cells  and  corridors  with  their  phantom  shapes.  We 
loitered  through  dungeon  after  dungeon,  away  down  into  the 
living  rock  below  the  level  of  the  sea,  it  seemed.  Sanies 
every  where  ! — some  plebeian,  some  noble,  some  even  princely. 
Plebeian, prince,  and  noble,  had  one  solicitude  in  common — they 
would  not  be  forgotten !  They  could  suffer  solitude,  inac 
tivity,  and  the  horrors  of  a  silence  that  no  sound  ever  dis 
turbed  ;  but  they  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  being  utterly 
forgotten  by  the  world.  Hence  the  carved  names.  In  one 
cell,  where  a  little  light  penetrated,  a  man  had  lived  twenty- 
seven  years  without  seeing  the  face  of  a  human  being — lived 
in  filth  and  wretchedness,  with  no  companionship  but  his  own 
thoughts,  and  they  were  sorrowful  enough,  and  hopeless 
enough,  no  doubt.  Whatever  his  jailers  considered  that  he 
needed  was  conveyed  to  his  cell  by  night,  through  a  wicket. 


A    LONG    CAPTIVITY. 


103 


This  man  carved  the  walls  of  his  prison-house  from  floor  to 
roof  with  all  manner  of  figures  of  men  and  animals,  grouped 


in  intricate  designs.  He  had 
toiled  there  year  after  year,  at 
his  self-appointed  task,  while 

infants  grew  to  boyhood — to  vigorous  youth — idled  through 
school  and  college — acquired  a  profession — claimed  man's  ma 
ture  estate — married  and  looked  back  to  infancy  as  to  a  thing 


104  DUNGEON    OF    THE    "IRON 

of  some  vague,  ancient  time,  almost.  But  who  shall  tell  how 
many  ages  it  seemed  to  this  prisoner?  "With  the  one,  time 
flew  sometimes;  with  the  other,  never — it  crawled  always. 
To  the  one,  nights  spent  in  dancing  had  seemed  made  of 
minutes  instead  of  hours ;  to  the  other,  those  self-same  nights 
had  been  like  all  other  nights  of  dungeon  life,  and  seemed 
made  of  slow,  dragging  weeks,  instead  of  hours  and  minutes. 

One  prisoner  of  fifteen  years  had  scratched  verses  upon  his 
walls,  and  brief  prose  sentences — brief,  but  full  of  pathos.  These 
spoke  not  of  himself  and  his  hard  estate  ;  but  only  of  the  shrine 
where  his  spirit  fled  the  prison  to  worship — of  home  and  the 
idols  that  were  templed  there.  He  never  lived  to  see  them. 

The  walls  of  these  dungeons  are  as  thick  as  some  bed-cham 
bers  at  home  are  wide — fifteen  feet.  We  saw  the  damp,  dis 
mal  cells  in  which  two  of  Dumas'  heroes  passed  their  confine 
ment — heroes  of  "  Monte  Christo."  It  was  here  that  the 
brave  Abbe*  wrote  a  book  with  his  own  blood ;  with  a  pen 
made  of  a  piece  of  iron  hoop,  and  by  the  light  of  a  lamp  made 
out  of  shreds  of  cloth  soaked  in  grease  obtained  from  his  food ; 
and  then  dug  through  the  thick  wall  with  some  trifling  instru 
ment  which  he  wrought  himself  out  of  a  stray  piece  of  iron  or 
table  cutlery,  and  freed  Dantes  from  his  chains.  It  was  a  pity 
that  so  many  weeks  of  dreary  labor  should  have  come  to 
naught  at  last. 

They  showed  us  the  noisome  cell  where  the  celebrated 
"  Iron  Mask  " — that  ill-starred  brother  of  a  hard-hearted  king 
of  France — was  confined  for  a  season,  before  he  was  sent  to 
hide  the  strange  mystery  of  his  life  from  the  curious  in  the 
dungeons  of  St.  Marguerite.  The  place  had  a  far  greater 
interest  for  us  than  it  could  have  had  if  we  had  known  be 
yond  all  question  who  the  Iron  Mask  was,  and  what  his  his 
tory  had  been,  and  why  this  most  unusual  punishment  had  been 
meted  out  to  him.  Mystery!  That  was  the  charm.  That 
speechless  tongue,  those  prisoned  features,  that  heart  so 
freighted  with  unspoken  troubles,  and  that  breast  so  oppressed 
with  its  piteous  secret,  had  been  here.  These  dank  walls  had 
known  the  man  whose  dolorous  story  is  a  sealed  book  forever ! 
There  was  fascination  in  the  spot. 


CHAPTEE   XII. 


"\TT~E  have  come  five  hundred  miles  by  rail  through  the 
*  *  heart  of  France.  What  a  bewitching  land  it  is  ! — 
What  a  garden  !  Surely  the  leagues  of  bright  green  lawns 
are  swept  and  brushed  and  watered  •  every  day  and  their 
grasses  trimmed  by  the  barber.  Surely  the  hedges  are  shaped 
and  measured  and  their  symmetry  preserved  by  the  most 
architectural  of  gardeners.  Surely  the  long  straight  rows  of 
stately  poplars  that  divide  the  beautiful  landscape  like  the 
squares  of  a  checker-board  are  set  with  line  and  plummet,  and 
their  uniform  height  determined  with  a  spirit  level.  Surely 
the  straight,  smooth,  pure  white  turnpikes  are  jack-planed  and 
sandpapered  every  day.  How  else  are  these  marvels  of  sym 
metry,  cleanliness  and  order  attained  ?  It  is  wonderful.  There 
are  no  unsightly  stone  walls,  and  never  a  fence  of  any  kind. 
There  is  no  dirt,  no  decay,  no  rubbish  any  where — nothing 
that  even  hints  at  untidiness — nothing  that  ever  suggests 
neglect.  All  is  orderly  and  beautiful — every  thing  is  charming 
to  the  eye. 

We  had  such  glimpses  of  the  Rhone  gliding  along  between 
its  grassy  banks ;  of  cosy  cottages  buried  in  flowers  and  shrub 
bery;  of  quaint  old  red-tiled  villages  with  mossy  medieval 
cathedrals  looming  out  of  their  midst ;  of  wooded  hills  with 
ivy-grown  towers  and  turrets  of  feudal  castles  projecting  above 
the  foliage ;  such  glimpses  of  Paradise,  it  seemed  to  us,  such 
visions  of  fabled  fairy-land  ! 

We  knew,  then,  what  the  poet  meant,  when  he  sang  of — 

" — thy  cornfields  green,  and  sutmy  vines, 
0  pleasant  land  of  France!" 


106  SUMMER     GARB     OF     THE     LANDSCAPE. 

And  it  is  a  pleasant  land.  E"o  word  describes  it  so  felici 
tously  as  that  one.  They  say  there  is  no  word  for  "  home  "  in 
the  French  language.  Well,  considering  that  they  have  the 
article  itself  in  such  an  attractive  aspect,  they  ought  to  manage 
to  get  along  without  the  word.  Let  us  not  waste  too  much 
pity  on  "homeless"  France.  I  have  observed  that  French 
men  abroad  seldom  wholly  give  up  the  idea  of  going  back  to 
France  some  time  or  other.  I  am  not  surprised  at  it  now. 

We  are  not  infatuated  with  these  French  railway  cars, 
though.  We  took  first  class  passage,  not  because  we  wished 
to  attract  attention  by  doing  a  thing  which  is  uncommon  in 
Europe,  but  because  we  could  make  our  journey  quicker  by  so 
doing.  It  is  hard  to  make  railroading  pleasant,  in  any  country. 
It  is  too  tedious.  Stage-coaching  is  infinitely  more  delightful. 
Once  I  crossed  the  plains  and  deserts  and  mountains  of  the 
West,  in  a  stage-coach,  from  the  Missouri  line  to  California, 
and  since  then  all  my  pleasure  trips  must  be  measured  to  that 
rare  holiday  frolic.  Two  thousand  miles  of  ceaseless  rush  and 
rattle  and  clatter,  by  night  and  by  day,  and  never  a  weary 
moment,  never  a  lapse  of  interest !  The  first  seven  hundred 
miles  a  level  continent,  its  grassy  carpet  greener  and  softer 
and  smoother  than  any  sea,  and  figured  with  designs  fitted  to 
its  magnitude — the  shadows  of  the  clouds.  Here  were  no 
scenes  but  summer  scenes,  and  no  disposition  inspired  by  them 
but  to  lie  at  full  length  on  the  mail  sacks,  in  the  grateful 
breeze,  and  dreamily  smoke  the  pipe  of  peace — what  other, 
where  all  was  repose  and  contentment?  In  cool  mornings, 
before  the  sun  was  fairly  up,  it  was  worth  a  lifetime  of  city 
toiling  and  moiling,  to  perch  in  the  foretop  with  the  driver 
and  see  the  six  mustangs  scamper  under  the  sharp  snapping 
of  a  whip  that  never  touched  them ;  to  scan  the  blue  distances 
of  a  world  that  knew  no  lords  but  us ;  to  cleave  the  wind  with 
uncovered  head  and  feel  the  sluggish  pulses  rousing  to  the  spirit 
of  a  speed  that  pretended  to  the  resistless  rush  of  a  typhoon ! 
Then  thirteen  hundred  miles  of  desert  solitudes ;  of  limitless 
panoramas  of  bewildering  perspective;  of  mimic  cities,  of  pin 
nacled  cathedrals,  of  massive  fortresses,  counterfeited  in  the 


PECULIARITIES     OF     FRENCH     CARS.  107 

eternal  rocks  and  splendid  with  the  crimson  and  gold  of  the 
setting  sun  ;  of  dizzy  altitudes  among  fog-wreathed  peaks  and 
never-melting  snows,  where  thunders  and  lightnings  and  tem 
pests  warred  magnificently  at  our  feet  and  the  storm-clouds 
above  swung  their  shredded  banners  in  our  very  faces ! 

But  I  forgot.  I  am  in  elegant  France,  now,  and  not  skur- 
rying  through  the  great  South  Pass  and  the  Wind  River 
Mountains,  among  antelopes  and  buffaloes,  and  painted  In 
dians  on  the  war  path.  It  is  not  meet  that  I  should  make  too 
disparaging  comparisons  between  hum-drum  travel  on  a  rail 
way  and  that  royal  summer  flight  across  a  continent  in  a 
stage-coach.  I  meant  in  the  beginning,  to  say  that  railway 
journeying  is  tedious  and  tiresome,  and  so  it  is — though  at  the 
time,  I  was  thinking  particularly  of  a  dismal  fifty-hour  pil 
grimage  between  New  York  and  St.  Louis.  Of  course  our 
trip  through  France  was  not  really  tedious,  because  all  its 
scenes  and  experiences  were  new  and  strange  ;  but  as  Dan 
says,  it  had  its  "  discrepancies." 

The  cars  are  built  in  compartments  that  hold  eight  persons 
each.  Each  compartment  is  partially  subdivided,  and  so  there 
are  two  tolerably  distinct  parties  of  four  in  it.  Four  face  the 
other  four.  The  seats  and  backs  are  thickly  padded  and  cush 
ioned  and  are  very  comfortable  ;  you  can  smoke,  if  you  wish ; 
there  are  no  bothersome  peddlers ;  you  are  saved  the  infliction 
of  a  multitude  of  disagreeable  fellow-passengers.  So  far,  so 
well.  But  then  the  conductor  locks  you  in  when  the  train 
starts ;  there  is  no  water  to  drink,  in  the  car ;  there  is  no 
heating  apparatus  for  night  travel ;  if  a  drunken  rowdy  should 
get  in,  you  could  not  remove  a  matter  of  twenty  seats  from 
him,  or  enter  another  car ;  but  above  all,  if  you  are  worn  out 
and  must  sleep,  you  must  sit  up  and  do  it  in  naps,  with 
cramped  legs  and  in  a  torturing  misery  that  leaves  you  withered 
and  lifeless  the  next  day — for  behold  they  have  not  that  culmi 
nation  of  all  charity  and  human  kindness,  a  sleeping  car,  in 
all  France.  I  prefer  the  American  system.  It  has  not  so 
many  grievous  "  discrepancies." 

In   France,  all  is  clockwork,  all  is  order.     They  make  no 


108 


FRENCH     POLITENESS. 


mistakes.  Every  third  man  wears  a  uniform,  and  whether  he 
be  a  Marshal  of  the  Empire  or  a  brakeman,  he  is  ready  and 
perfectly  willing  to  answer  all  your  questions  with  tireless 
politeness,  ready  to  tell  you  which  car  to  take,  yea,  and  ready 
to  go  and  put  you  into  it  to  make  sure  that  you  shall  not 
go  astray.  You  can  not  pass  into  the  waiting-room  of  the 
depot  till  you  have  secured  your  ticket,  and  you  can  not  pass 
from  its  only  exit  till  the  train  is  at  its  threshold  to  receive 


RAILROAD    OFFICIAL   IN   FRANCE. 


you.  Once  on  board,  the  train  will  not  start  till  your  ticket 
has  been  examined — till  every  passenger's  ticket  has  been 
inspected.  This  is  chiefly  for  your  own  good.  If  by  any 
possibility  you  have  managed  to  take  the  wrong  train,  you 
will  be  handed  over  to  a  polite  official  who  will  take  you 
whither  you  belong,  and  bestow  you  with  many  an  affable 
bow.  Your  ticket  wrill  be  inspected  every  now  and  then  along 
the  route,  and  when  it  is  time  to  change  cars  you  will  know  it. 
You  are  in  the  hands  of  officials  who  zealously  study  your 
welfare  and  your  interest,  instead  of  turning  their  talents  to 
the  invention  of  new  methods  of  discommoding  and  snubbing 
you,  as  is  very  often  the  main  employment  of  that  exceedingly 
self-satisfied  monarch,  the  railroad  conductor  of  America. 
But  the  happiest  regulation  in  French  raihvay  government, 


THIRTY     MINUTES     FOR     DINNER!" 


109 


is — thirty  minutes  to  dinner!  No  five-minute  boltings  of 
flabby  rolls,  muddy  coffee,  questionable  eggs,  gutta-percha 
beef,  and  pies  whose  conception  and  execution  are  a  dark  and 
bloody  mystery  to  all  save  the  cook  that  created  them  !  "No ; 
we  sat  calmly  down — it  was  in  old  Dijon,  which  is  so  easy  to 
spell  and  so  impossible  to  pronounce,  except  when  you  civilize 
it  and  call  it  Demijohn — and  poured  out  rich  Burgundian 
wines  and  munched  calmly  through  a  long  table  d'hote  bill  of 
fare,  snail-patties,  delicious  fruits  and  all,  then  paid  the  trifle 
it  cost  and  stepped  happily  aboard  the  train  again,  without 


PAY 

0EFOREIAK1HC 

S  EAT<S  H 


"FIVE  MINUTES   FOR  REFRESHMENTS." — AMERICA. 

once  cursing  the  railroad  company.     A  rare  experience,  and 
one  to  be  treasured  forever. 

They  say  they  do  not  have  accidents  on  these  French  roads, 
and  I  think  it  must  be  true.  If  I  remember  rightly,  we  passed 
high  above  wagon  roads,  or  through  tunnels  under  them,  but 
never  crossed  them  on  their  own  level.  About  every  quarter 
of  a  mile,  it  seemed  to  me,  a  man  came  out  and  held  up  a  club 
till  the  train  went  by,  to  signify  that  every  thing  was  safe 
ahead.  Switches  were  changed  a  mile  in  advance,  by  pulling 
a  wire  rope  that  passed  along  the  ground  by  the  rail,  from 


110 


WHY     THERE     ARE     NO     ACCIDENTS. 


station  to  station.     Signals  for  the  day  and  signals  for  the  night 
gave  constant  and  timely  notice  of  the  position  of  switches. 

No,  they  have  no  railroad  accidents  to  speak  of  in  France. 
But  why  ?  Because  when  one  occurs,  somebody  has  to  hang  for 
it  t  *  Not  hang,  may  be,  but  be  punished  at  least  with  such 


g  to  be  shucl- 


it! 

vigor  of  emphasis  as  to  make  negligence  a  thin 
dered  at  by  railroad  officials  for  many  a  day  thereafter.     "  No 
blame  attached  to  the  officers  " — that  lying  and  disaster-breed 
ing  verdict  so  common  to  our  soft-hearted  juries,  is  seldom 


11  ^ 


"THIRTY   MINUTES   FOR   DINNER!" — FRANCE. 


rendered  in  France.  If  the  trouble  occurred  in  the  conduct 
or's  department,  that  officer  must  suffer  if  his  subordinate 
can  not  be  proven  guilty ;  if  in  the  engineer's  department,  and 
the  case  be  similar,  the  engineer  must  answer. 

The  Old  Travelers — those  delightful  parrots  who  have 
"  been  here  before,"  and  know  more  about  the  country  than 
Louis  Napoleon  knows  now  or  ever  will  know, — tell  us  these 
things,  and  we  believe  them  because  they  are  pleasant  things 
to  believe,  and  because  they  are  plausible  and  savor  of  the 

*  They  go  on  the  principle  that  it  is  better  that  one  innocent  man  should  suffer 
than  five  hundred. 


THE 


OLD     TRAVELERS. 


Ill 


rigid  subjection  to  law  and  order  which  we  behold  about  us 
every  where. 

But  we  love  the  Old  Travelers.     We  love  to  hear  them 
prate,  and  drivel  and  lie.     We  can  tell  them  the  moment  we 
see  them.     They  always  throw  out  a  few  feelers ;  they  never 
cast  themselves  adrift  till  they  have  sounded  every  individual 
and  know  that  he  has 
not     traveled.      Then 
they  open  their  throt 
tle-valves,     and     how 
they     do     brag,     and 
sneer,   and  swell,  and 
soar,    and     blaspheme 
the    sacred    name    of 
Truth !      Their      cen 
tral   idea,   their  grand 
aim,    is    to    subjugate 
you,  keep  you   down, 
make   you    feel   insig 
nificant  and  humble  in 
the  blaze  of  their  cos 
mopolitan  glory !  They 

will  not  let  you  know  any  thing.  They  sneer  at  your  most 
inoffensive  suggestions ;  they  laugh  unfeelingly  at  your  treas 
ured  dreams  of  foreign  lands ;  they  brand  the  statements  of 
your  traveled  aunts  and  uncles  as  the  stupidest  absurdities; 
they  deride  your  most  trusted  authors  and  demolish  the  fair 
images  they  have  set  up  for  your  willing  worship  with  the 
pitiless  ferocity  of  the  fanatic  iconoclast !  But  still  I  love  the 
Old  Travelers.  I  love  them  for  their  witless  platitudes ;,  for 
their  supernatural  ability  to  bore ;  for  their  delightful  asinine 
vanity ;  for  their  luxuriant  fertility  of  imagination ;  for  their 
startling,  their  brilliant,  their  overwhelming  mendacity  ! 

By  Lyons  and  the  Saone  (where  we  saw  the  lady  of  Lyons 
and  thought  little  of  her  comeliness ;)  by  Villa  Franca,  Ton- 
nere,  venerable  Sens,  Melun,  Fontainebleau,  and  scores  of  other 
beautiful  cities,  we  swept,  always  noting  the  absence  of  hog- 


THE   OLD   TRAVELER. 


112  PARIS     AT     LAST. 

wallows,  broken  fences,  cowlots,  unpainted  houses  and  mud, 
and  always  noting,  as  well,  the  presence  of  cleanliness,  grace, 
taste  in  adorning  and  beautifying,  even  to  the  disposition  of  a 
tree  or  the  turning  of  a  hedge,  the  marvel  of  roads  in  perfect 
repair,  void  of  ruts  and  guiltless  of  even  an  inequality  of  sur 
face — we  bowled  along,  hour  after  hour,  that  brilliant  summer 
day,  and  as  nightfall  approached  we  entered  a  wilderness  of 
odorous  flowers  and  shrubbery,  sped  through  it,  and  then, 
excited,  delighted,  and  half  persuaded  that  we  were  only  the 
sport  of  a  beautiful  dream,  lo,  we  stood  in  magnificent  Paris  ! 

What  excellent  order  they  kept  about  that  vast  depot! 
There  was  no  frantic  crowding  and  jostling,  no  shouting  and 
swearing,  and  no  swaggering  intrusion  of  services  by  rowdy 
hackmen.  These  latter  gentry  stood  outside — stood  quietly 
by  their  long  line  of  vehicles  and  said  never  a  word.  A  kind 
of  hackman-general  seemed  to  have  the  whole  matter  of  trans 
portation  in  his  hands.  He  politely  received  the  passengers 
and  ushered  them  to  the  kind  of  conveyance  they  wranted,  and 
told  the  driver  where  to  deliver  them.  There  was  no  "  talking 
back,"  no  dissatisfaction  about  overcharging,  no  grumbling 
about  any  thing.  In  a  little  while  we  were  speeding  through 
the  streets  of  Paris,  and  delightfully  recognizing  certain  names 
and  places  with  wThich  books  had  long  ago  made  us  familiar. 
It  was  like  meeting  an  old  friend  when  we  read  "  Rue  de 
Rivoli  "  on  the  street  corner  •  we  knew  the  genuine  vast  palace 
of  the  Louvre  as  well  as  we  knew  its  picture ;  when  we  passed 
by  the  Column  of  July  we  needed  no  one  to  tell  us  what  it 
was,  or  to  remind  us  that  on  its  site  once  stood  the  grim  Bas- 
tile,  that  grave  of  human  hopes  and  happiness,  that  dismal 
prison-house  within  whose  dungeons  so  many  young  faces  put 
on  the  wrinkles  of  age,  so  many  proud  spirits  grew  humble,  so 
many  brave  hearts  broke. 

We  secured  rooms  at  the  hotel,  or  rather,  we  had  three  beds 
put  into  one  room,  so  that  we  might  be  together,  and  then  we 
went  out  to  a  restaurant,  just  after  lamp-lighting,  and  ate  a 
comfortable,  satisfactory,  lingering  dinner.  It  was  a  pleasure 
to  eat  where  every  thing  was  so  tidy,  the  food  so  well  cooked, 


SEEING     THE     SIGHTS.  113 

the  waiters  so  polite,  and  the  coming  and  departing  company 
so  moust ached,  so  frisky,  so  affable,  so  fearfully  and  wonder 
fully  Frenchy !  All  the  surroundings  were  gay  and  enliven 
ing.  Two  hundred  people  sat  at  little  tables  on  the  sidewalk, 
sipping  wine  and  coffee  ;  the  streets  were  thronged  with  light 
vehicles  and  with  joyous  pleasure  seekers ;  there  was  music 
in  the  air,  life  and  action  all  about  us,  and  a  conflagration  of 
gaslight  every  where ! 

After  dinner  we  felt  like  seeing  such  Parisian  specialties  as 
we  might  see  without  distressing  exertion,  and  so  we  sauntered 
through  the  brilliant  streets  and  looked  at  the  dainty  trifles  in 
variety  stores  and  jewelry  shops.  Occasionally,  merely  for  the 
pleasure  of  being  cruel,  we  put  unoffending  Frenchmen  on  the 
rack  with  questions  framed  in  the  incomprehensible  jargon  of 
their  native  language,  and  while  they  writhed,  we  impaled 
them,  we  peppered  them,  we  scarified  them,  with  their  own 
vile  verbs  and  participles. 

We  noticed  that  in  the  jewelry  stores  they  had  some  of  the 
articles  marked  "  gold,"  and  some  labeled  "  imitation."  We 
wondered  at  this  extravagance  of  honesty,  and  inquired  into 
the  matter.  We  were  informed  that  inasmuch  as  most  people 
are  not  able  to  tell  false  gold  from  the  genuine  article,  the 
government  compels  jewelers  to  have  their  gold  work  assayed 
and  stamped  officially  according  to  its  fineness,  and  their 
imitation  work  duly  labeled  with  the  sign  of  its  falsity.  They 
told  us  the  jewelers  would  not  dare  to  violate  this  law,  and 
that  whatever  a  stranger  bought  in  one  of  their  stores  might 
be  depended  upon  as  being  strictly  what  it  was  represented 
to  be. — Yerily,  a  wonderful  land  is  France ! 

Then  we  hunted  for  a  barber-shop.  From  earliest  infancy 
it  had  been  a  cherished  ambition  of  mine  to  be  shaved  some 
day  in  a  palatial  barber-shop  of  Paris.  I  wished  to  recline  at 
full  length  in  a  cushioned  invalid  chair,  with  pictures  about 
me,  and  sumptuous  furniture ;  with  frescoed  walls  and  gilded 
arches  above  me,  and  vistas  of  Corinthian  columns  stretching 
far  before  me ;  with  perfumes  of  Araby  to  intoxicate  my  senses, 
and  the  slumbrous  drone  of  distant  noises  to  soothe  me  to 


A     BARBAROUS     ATROCITY. 

sleep.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  I  would  wake  up  regretfully 
and  find  my  face  as  smooth  and  as  soft  as  an  infant's.  Depart 
ing,  I  would  lift  my  hands  above  that  barber's  head  and  say, 
"  Heaven  bless  you,  my  son !" 

So  we  searched  high  and  low,  for  a  matter  of  two  hours,  but 
never  a  barber-shop  could  we  see.  We  saw  only  wig-making 
establishments,  with  shocks  of  dead  and  repulsive  hair  bound 
upon  the  heads  of  painted  waxen  brigands  who  stared  out  from 
glass  boxes  upon  the  passer-by,  with  their  stony  eyes,  and 
scared  him  with  the  ghostly  white  of  their  countenances.  We 
shunned  these  signs  for  a  time,  but  finally  we  concluded  that 
the  wig-makers  must  of  necessity  be  the  barbers  as  well, 
since  we  could  find  no  single  legitimate  representative  of  the 
fraternity.  We  entered  and  asked,  and  found  that  it  was 
even  so. 

I  said  I  wanted  to  be  shaved.  The  barber  inquired  where 
my  room  was.  I  said,  never  mind  where  my  room  was,  I 
wanted  to  be  shaved — there,  on  the  spot.  The  doctor  said  he 
would  be  shaved  also.  Then  there  was  an  excitement  among 

O 

those  two  barbers-!  There  was  a  wild  consultation,  and  after 
wards  a  hurrying  to  and  fro  and  a  feverish  gathering  up  of 
razors  from  obscure  places  and  a  ransacking  for  soap.  Next 
they  took  us  into  a  little  mean,  shabby  back  room ;  they  got 
two  ordinary  sitting-room  chairs  and  placed  us  in  them,  with 
our  coats  on.  My  old,  old  dream  of  bliss  vanished  into  thin 
air! 

I  sat  bolt  upright,  silent,  sad,  and  solemn.  One  of  the  wig- 
making  villains  lathered  my  face  for  ten  terrible  minutes  and 
finished  by  plastering  a  mass  of  suds  into  my  mouth.  I  ex 
pelled  the  nasty  stuff  with  a  strong  English  expletive  and  said, 
"  Foreigner,  beware  !"  Then  this  outlaw  strapped  his  razor  on 
his  boot,  hovered  over  me  ominously  for  six  fearful  seconds, 
and  then  swooped  down  upon  me  like  the  genius  of  destruc 
tion.  The  first  rake  of  his  razor  loosened  the  very  hide  from 
my  face  and  lifted  me  out  of  the  chair.  I  stormed  and  raved, 
and  the  other  boys  enjoyed  it.  Their  beards  are  not  strong 
and  thick.  Let  us  draw  the  curtain  over  this  harrowing  scene. 


A     BARBAROUS     ATROCITY. 


115 


Suffice  it  that  I  submitted,  and  went  through  with  the  cruel 
infliction  of  a  shave  by  a  French  barber ;  tears  of  exquisite 
agony  coursed  down  my  cheeks,  now  and  then,  but  I  survived. 
Then  the  incipient  assassin  held  a  basin  of  water  under  my 
chin  and  slopped  its  contents  over  my  face,  and  into  my 
bosom,  and  down  the  back  of  my  neck,  with  a  mean  pretense 
of  washing  away  the  soap  and  blood.  He  dried  my  features 


A  DECIDED  SHAVE. 


with  a  towel,  and  was  going  to  comb  my  hair ;  but  I  asked  to 
be  excused.  I  said,  with  withering  irony,  that  it  was  sufficient 
to  be  skinned — I  declined  to  be  scalped. 

I  went  away  from  there  with  my  handkerchief  about  my 
face,  and  never,  never,  never  desired  to  dream  of  palatial 
Parisian  barber-shops  any  more.  The  truth  is,  as  I  believe  I 
have  since  found  out,  that  they  have  no  barber  shops  worthy 
of  the  name,  in  Paris — and  no  barbers,  either,  for  that  matter. 
The  impostor  who  does  duty  as  a  barber,  brings  his  pans  and 


116  ABSURD     BILLIARDS. 

napkins  and  implements  of  torture  to  your  residence  and 
deliberately  skins  you  in  your  private  apartments.  Ah,  I 
have  suffered,  suffered,  suffered,  here  in  Paris,  but  never  mind 
— the  time  is  coming  when  I  shall  have  a  dark  and  bloody 
revenge.  Some  day  a  Parisian  barber  will  come  to  my  room 
to  skin  me,  and  from  that  day  forth,  that  barber  will  never  be 
heard  of  more. 

At  eleven  o'clock  we  alighted  upon  a  sign  which  manifestly 
referred  to  billiards.  Joy !  We  had  played  billiards  in  the 
Azores  with  balls  that  were  not  round,  and  on  an  ancient 
table  that  was  very  little  smoother  than  a  brick  pavement — 
one  of  those  wretched  old  things  with  dead  cushions,  and  with 
patches  in  the  faded  cloth  and  invisible  obstructions  that  made 
the  balls  describe  the  most  astonishing  and  unsuspected  angles 
and  perform  feats  in  the  way  of  unlooked-for  and  almost  impos 
sible  "  scratches,"  that  were  perfectly  bewildering.  We  had 
played  at  Gibraltar  with  balls  the  size  of  a  walnut,  on  a  table 
like  a  public  square — and  in  both  instances  we  achieved  far 
more  aggravation  than  amusement.  We  expected  to  fare 
better  here,  but  we  were  mistaken.  The  cushions  were  a  good 
deal  higher  than  the  balls,  and  as  the  balls  had  a  fashion  of 
always  stopping  under  the  cushions,  we  accomplished  very 
little  in  the  way  of  caroms.  The  cushions  were  hard  and 
unelastic,  and  the  cues  were  so  crooked  that  in  making  a  shot 
you  had  to  allow  for  the  curve  or  you  would  infallibly  put  the 
"  English  "  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  ball.  Dan  was  to  mark 
while  the  doctor  and  I  played.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  neither 
of  us  had  made  a  count,  and  so  Dan  was  tired  of  keeping  tally 
with  nothing  to  tally,  and  we  were  heated  and  angry  and 
disgusted.  We  paid  the  heavy  bill — about  six  cents — and 
said  we  would  call  around  some  time  when  we  had  a  week  to 
spend,  and  finish  the  game. 

We  adjourned  to  one  of  those  pretty  cafe's  and  took  supper 
and  tested  the  wines  of  the  country,  as  we  had  been  instructed 
to  do,  and  found  them  harmless  and  imexciting.  They  might 
have  been  exciting,  however,  if  we  had  chosen  to  drink  a  suffi 
ciency  of  them. 


GASTLY     EXPERIENCE.* 


117 


To  close  our  first  day  in  Paris  cheerfully  and  pleasantly,  we 
now  sought  our  grand  room  in  the  Grand  Hotel  du  Louvre 
and  climbed  into  our  sumptuous  bed,  to  read  and  smoke — but 
alas! 

It  was  pitiful, 
In  a  whole  city-full, 
Gas  we  had  none. 

No  gas  to  read  by — nothing  but  dismal  candles.  It  was  a 
shame.  We  tried  to  map  out  excursions  for  the  morrow ;  we 
puzzled  over  French  "  Guides  to  Paris ;"  we  talked  disjointedly, 
in  a  vain  endeavor  to  make  head  or  tail  of  the  wild  chaos  of 


A   GAS-TLY   SUBSTITUTE 

the  day's  sights  and  experiences;  we  subsided  to  indolent 
smoking ;  we  gaped  and  yawned,  and  stretched — then  feebly 
wondered  if  we  were  really  and  truly  in  renowned  Paris,  and 
drifted  drowsily  away  into  that  vast  mysterious  void  which 
men  call  sleep. 

*  Joke  by  the  Doctor. 


CHAPTEE   XIII. 

THE  next  morning  we  were  np  and  dressed  at  ten  o'clock. 
We  went  to  the  commissionaire  of  the  hotel — I  don't 
know  what  a  commissionaire  is,  but  that  is  the  man  we  went  to 
—and  told  him  we  wanted  a  guide.  He  said  the  great  Inter 
national  Exposition  had  drawn  such  multitudes  of  Englishmen 
and  Americans  to  Paris  that  it  would  be  next  to  impossible  to 
find  a  good  guide  unemployed.  He  said  he  usually  kept  a 
dozen  or  two  on  hand,  but  he  only  had  three  now.  He  called 
them.  One  looked  so  like  a  very  pirate  that  we  let  him  go  at 
once.  The  next  one  spoke  with  a  simpering  precision  of  pro 
nunciation  that  was  irritating,  and  said  :  , 

"If  ze  zhentlemans  will  to  me  make  ze  grande  honneur  to 
me  rattain  in  hees  serveece,  I  shall  show  to  him  every  sing  zat 
is  magnifique  to  look  upon  in  ze  beautiful  Parree.  I  speaky 
ze  Angleesh  pairfaitemaw." 

He  would  have  done  well  to  have  stopped  there,  because  he 
had  that  much  by  heart  and  said  it  right  off  without  making 
a  mistake.  But  his  self-complacency  seduced  him  into  at 
tempting  a  flight  into  regions  of  unexplored  English,  and  the 
reckless  experiment  was  his  ruin.  Within  ten  seconds  he  was 
so  tangled  up  in  a  maze  of  mutilated  verbs  and  torn  and 
bleeding  forms  of  speech  that  no  human  ingenuity  could  ever 
have  gotten  him  out  of  it  with  credit.  It  was  plain  enough 
that  he  could  not  "  speaky  "  the  English  quite  as  "  pairfaite 
maw  "  as  he  had  pretended  he  could. 

The  third  man  captured  us.  He  was  plainly  dressed,  but 
he  had  a  noticeable  air  of  neatness  about  him.  He  wore  a 


MONSIEUR     BILLFINGER. 


119 


high  silk  hat  which  was  a  little  old,  but  had  been  carefully 
brushed.     He  wore  second-hand  kid  gloves,  in  good  repair, 


THE  THREE  GUIDES. 


and  carried  a  small  rattan  cane  with  a  curved  handle — a 
female  leg,  of  ivory.  He  stepped  as  gently  and  as  daintily  as 
a  cat  crossing  a  muddy  street ;  and  oh,  he  was  urbanity ;  he 
was  quiet,  unobtrusive  self-possession ;  he  was  deference  itself! 
He  spoke  softly  and  guardedly;  and  when  he  was  about  to 
make  a  statement  on  his  sole  responsibility,  or  offer  a  sugges 
tion,  he  weighed  it  by  drachms  and  scruples  first,  with  the 
crook  of  his  little  stick  placed  meditatively  to  his  teeth.  His 
opening  speech  was  perfect.  It  was  perfect  in  construction, 
in  phraseology,  in  grammar,  in  emphasis,  in  pronunciation— 
every  thing.  He  spoke  little  and  guardedly,  after  that.  We 
were  charmed.  We  were  more  than  charmed — we  were  over 
joyed.  We  hired  him  at  once.  We  never  even  asked  him  his 
price.  This  man — our  lackey,  our  servant,  our  unquestioning 
slave  though  he  was,  was  still  a  gentleman — we  could  see  that 
— while  of  the  other  two  one  was  coarse  and  awkward,  and  the 
other  was  a  born  pirate.  We  asked  our  man  Friday's  name. 
He  drew  from  his  pocket-book  a  snowy  little  card,  and  passed 
it  to  us  with  a  profound  bow : 


A.  BILLFINGER, 

Guide  to  Paris,  France,  Germany, 
Spain,  &c.,  &c., 

Grande  Hotel  du  Louvre. 


120  RE-CHRISTENING     THE     FRENCHMAN. 

"  Billfinger !     Oh,  carry  me  home  to  die !" 

That  was  an  "  aside  "  from  Dan.  The  atrocious  name  grated 
harshly  on  my  ear,  too.  The  most  of  us  can  learn  to  forgive, 
and  even  to  like,  a  countenance  that  strikes  us  unpleasantly 
at  first,  but  few  of  us,  I  fancy,  become  reconciled  to  a  jar 
ring  name  so  easily.  I  was  almost  sorry  we  had  hired  this 
man,  his  name  was  so  unbearable.  However,  no  matter.  We 
were  impatient  to  start.  Billfinger  stepped  to  the  door  to  call 
a  carriage,  and  then  the  doctor  said : 

"  "Well,  the  guide  goes  with  the  barber-shop,  with  the  bil 
liard-table,  with  the  gasless  room,  and  may  be  with  many  an 
other  pretty  romance  of  Paris.  I  expected  to  have  a  guide 
named  Henri  de  Montmorency,  or  Armand  de  la  Chartreuse, 
or  something  that  would  sound  grand  in  letters  to  the  villagers 
at  home ;  but  to  think  of  a  Frenchman  by  the  name  of  Bill- 
finger  !  Oh !  this  is  absurd,  you  know.  This  will  never  do. 
We  can't  say  Billfinger;  it  is  nauseating.  Name  him  over 
again :  what  had  we  better  call  him  ?  Alexis  du  Caulain- 
court  ?" 

"  Alphonse  Henri  Gustave  de  Hauteville,"  I  suggested. 

"  Call  him  Ferguson,"  said  Dan. 

That  was  practical,  unromantic  good  sense.  Without  de 
bate,  we  expunged  Billfinger  as  Billfinger,  and  called  him  Fer 
guson. 

The  carriage — an  open  barouche — was  ready.  Ferguson 
mounted  beside  the  driver,  and  we  whirled  away  to  breakfast. 
As  was  proper,  Mr.  Ferguson  stood  by  to  transmit  our  orders 
and  answer  questions.  Bye  and  bye,  he  mentioned  casually — 
the  artful  adventurer — that  he  would  go  and  get  his  breakfast 
as  soon  as  we  had  finished  ours.  He  knew  we  could  not  get 
along  without  him,  and  that  we  would  not  want  to  loiter 

o  ~ 

about  and  wait  for  him.  We  asked  him  to  sit  down  and  eat 
with  us.  He  begged,  with  many  a  bow,  to  be  excused.  It 
was  not  proper,  he  said ;  he  would  sit  at  another  table.  We 
ordered  him  peremptorily  to  sit  down  with  us. 

Here  endeth  the  first  lesson.     It  was  a  mistake. 

As  long  as  we  had  that  fellow  after  that,  he  was  always 


"SOLD."  121 

hungry;  he  was  always  thirsty.  He  came  early;  he  stayed 
late ;  lie  could  not  pass  a  restaurant ;  he  looked  with  a  lecher 
ous  eye  upon  every  wine  shop.  Suggestions  to  stop,  excuses 
to  eat  and  to  drink  were  forever  on  his  lips.  We  tried  all  we 
could  to  fill  him  so  full  that  he  would  have  no  room  to  spare 
for  a  fortnight ;  but  it  was  a  failure.  He  did  not  hold  enough 
to  smother  the  cravings  of  his  superhuman  appetite. 

He  had  another  "  discrepancy  "  about  him.  He  was  always 
wanting  us  to  buy  things.  On  the  shallowest  pretenses,  he 
would  inveigle  us  into  shirt  stores,  boot  stores,  tailor  shops, 
glove  shops — any  where  under  the  broad  sweep  of  the  heavens 
that  there  seemed  a  chance  of  our  buying  any  thing.  Any 
one  could  have  guessed  that  the  shopkeepers  paid  him  a  per 
centage  on  the  sales ;  but  in  our  blessed  innocence  we  didn't, 
until  this  feature  of  his  conduct  grew  unbearably  prominent. 
One  day,  Dan  happened  to  mention  that  he  thought  of  buying 
three  or  four  silk  dress  patterns  for  presents.  Ferguson's 
hungry  eye  was  upon  him  in  an  instant.  In  the  course  of 
twenty  minutes,  the  carriage  stopped. 

"What's  this?" 

"  Zis  is  ze  finest  silk  magazin  in  Paris — ze  most  cele 
brate." 

"  What  did  you  come  here  for?  We  told  you  to  take  us  to 
the  palace  of  the  Louvre." 

"  I  suppose  ze  gentleman  say  he  wish  to  buy  some  silk." 

"  You  are  not  required  to  t  suppose '  things  for  the  party, 
Ferguson.  We  do  not  wish  to  tax  your  energies  too  much. 
We  will  bear  some  of  the  burden  and  heat  of 'the  day  our 
selves.  We  will  endeavor  to  do  such  i  supposing '  as  is  really 
necessary  to  be  done.  Drive  on."  So  spake  the  doctor. 

Within  fifteen  minutes  the  carriage  halted  again,  and  before 
another  silk  store.  The  doctor  said  : 

"  Ah,  the  palace  of  the  Louvre :  beautiful,  beautiful  edifice ! 
Does  the  Emperor  Napoleon  live  here  now,  Ferguson  ?" 

"Ah,  doctor!  you  do  jest;  zis  is  not  ze  palace;  we  come 
there  directly.  But  since  we  pass  right  by  zis  store,  where  is 
such  beautiful  silk — " 


122 


SOLD. 


"  Ah !  I  see,  I  see.  I  meant  to  have  told  you  that  we  did 
not  wish  to  purchase  any  silks  to-day ;  but  in  my  absent- 
mindedness  I  forgot  it.  I  also  meant  to  tell  you  we 
wished  to  go  directly  to  the  Louvre ;  but  I  forgot  that  also. 
However,  we  will  go  there  now.  Pardon  my  seeming  care 
lessness,  Ferguson.  Drive  on." 

Within  the  half  hour,  we  stopped  again — in  front  of  another 
silk  store.  We  were  angry ;  but  the  doctor  was  always  serene, 
always  smooth-voiced.  He  said : 

"  At  last!  How  imposing  the  Louvre  is,  and  yet  how 
small !  how  exquisitely  fashioned  !  how  charmingly  situated  ! 
— Venerable,  venerable  pile — 

"  Pairdon,  doctor,  zis  is  not  ze  Louvre — it  is — 

"  Whati&itl" 

"  I  have  ze  idea — it  come  to  me  in  a  moment — zat  ze  silk  in 
zis  magazin — 


ZE   SILK   MAGAZIX." 


"  Ferguson,  how  heedless  I  am.     I  fully  intended  to  tell  you 


"SOLD."  123 

that  we  did  not  wish  to  buy  any  silks  to-day,  and  I  also  in 
tended  to  tell  you  that  we  yearned  to  go  immediately  to  the 
palace  of  the  Louvre,  but  enjoying  the  happiness  of  seeing  you 
devour  four  breakfasts  this  morning  has  so  filled  me  with 
pleasurable  emotions  that  I  neglect  the  commonest  interests 
of  the  time.  However,  we  will  proceed  now  to  the  Louvre, 
Ferguson." 

"  But  doctor,"  (excitedly,)  "  it  will  take  not  a  minute — not 
but  one  small  minute !  Ze  gentleman  need  not  to  buy  if  he 
not  wish  to — but  only  look  at  ze  silk — look  at  ze  beautiful 
fabric."  [Then  pleadingly.]  "  Salr— just  only  one  leetle  mo 
ment  !" 

Dan  said,  "  Confound  the  idiot !  I  don't  want  to  see  any 
silks  to-day,  and  I  won't  look  at  them.  Drive  on." 

And  the  doctor :  "  We  need  no  silks  now,  Ferguson.  Our 
hearts  yearn  for  the  Louvre.  Let  us  journey  on — let  us  jour 
ney  on." 

"  But  doctor !  it  is  only  one  moment — one  leetle  moment. 
And  ze  time  wrill  be  save — entirely  save!  Because  zere  is 
nothing  to  see,  now — it  is  too  late.  It  want  ten  minute  to 
four  and  ze  Louvre  close  at  four — only  one  leetle  moment,  doc 
tor!" 

The  treacherous  miscreant!  After  four  breakfasts  and  a 
gallon  of  champagne,  to  serve  us  such  a  scurvy  trick.  We 
got  no  sight  of  the  countless  treasures  of  art  in  the  Louvre 
galleries  that  day,  and  our  only  poor  little  satisfaction  was  in 
the  reflection  that  Ferguson  sold  not  a  solitary  silk  dress  pat 
tern. 

I  am  writing  this  chapter  partly  for  the  satisfaction  of  abus 
ing  that  accomplished  knave,  Billfinger,  and  partly  to  show 
whosoever  shall  read  this  how  Americans  fare  at  the  hands  of 
the  Paris  guides,  and  what  sort  of  people  Paris  guides  are. 
It  need  not  be  supposed  that  we  were  a  stupider  or  an  easier 
prey  than  our  countrymen  generally  are,  for  we  were  not. 
The  guides  deceive  and  defraud  every  American  who  goes  to 
Paris  for  the  first  time  and  sees  its  sights  alone  or  in  company 
with  others  as  little  experienced  as  himself.  I  shall  visit 


THE     INTERNATIONAL     EXPOSITION. 


Paris  again  some  day,  and  then  let  the  guides  beware!     I 
shall  go  in  my  war-paint — I  shall  carry  my  tomahawk  along. 
I  think  we  have  lost  but  little  time  in  Paris.     "We  have 

gone  to  bed  every  night  tired 
•  out.  Of  course  we  visited  the 
renowned  International  Ex 
position.  All  the  world  did 
that.  We  went  there  on  our 
third  day  in  Paris — and  we 
stayed  there  nearly  two  hours. 
That  was  our  first  and  last  visit. 
To  tell  the  truth,  we  saw  at  a 
glance  that  one  would  have  to 
spend  weeks — yea,  even  months 
— in  that  monstrous  establish 
ment,  to  get  an  intelligible  idea 
of  it.  It  was  a  wonderful 
show,  but  the  moving  masses 
of  people  of  all  nations  we 
saw  there  were  a  still  more 
wonderful  show.  I  discovered 
that  if  I  were  to  stay  there  a 
month,  I  should  still  find  my 
self  looking  at  the  people  in 
stead  of  the  inanimate  objects 
on  exhibition.  I  got  a  little  interested  in  some  curious  old 
tapestries  of  the  thirteenth  century,  but  a  party  of  Arabs 
came  by,  and  their  dusky  faces  and  quaint  costumes  called  my 
attention  away  at  once.  I  watched  a  silver  swan,  which  had 
a  living  grace  about  his  movements,  and  a  living  intelligence 
in  his  eyes — watched  him  swimming  about  as  comfortably  and 
as  unconcernedly  as  if  he  had  been  born  in  a  morass  instead 
of  a  jeweller's  shop — watched  him  seize  a  silver  fish  from 
under  the  water  and  hold  up  his  head  and  go  through  all  the 
customary  and  elaborate  motions  of  swallowing  it — but  the 
moment  it  disappeared  down  his  throat  some  tattooed  South 
Sea  Islanders  approached  and  I  yielded  to  their  attractions. 


RETURN  IN   WAR-PAINT. 


FINE    MILITARY    REVIEW.  125 

Presently  I  found  a  revolving  pistol  several  hundred  years 
old  which  looked  strangely  like  a,  modern  Colt,  but  just  then 
I  heard  that  the  Empress  of  the  French  was  in  another  part 
of  the  building,  and  hastened  away  to  see  what  she  might 
look  like.  We  heard  martial  music — we  saw  an  unusual 
number  of  soldiers  walking  hurriedly  about — there  was  a 
general  movement  among  the  people.  "We  inquired  what  it 
was  all  about,  and  learned  that  the  Emperor  of  the  French 
and  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  were  about  to  review  twenty-five 
thousand  troops  at  the  Arc  de  TEtoik.  We  immediately  de 
parted.  I  had  a  greater  anxiety  to  see  these  men  than  I  could 
have  had  to  see  twenty  Expositions. 

"We  drove  away  and  took  up  a  position  in  an  open  space 
opposite  the  American  Minister's  house.  A  speculator  bridged 
a  couple  of  barrels  with  a  board  and  we  hired  standing-places 
on  it.  Presently  there  was  a  sound  of  distant  music ;  in  an 
other  minute  a  pillar  of  dust  came  moving  slowly  toward  us ; 
a  moment  more,  and  then,  with  colors  flying  and  a  grand 
crash  of  military  music,  a  gallant  array  of  cavalrymen 
emerged  from  the  dust  and  came  down  the  street  on  a  gentle 
trot.  After  them  came  a  long  line  of  artillery ;  then  more 
cavalry,  in  splendid  uniforms;  and  then  their  Imperial  Ma 
jesties  Napoleon  III.  and  Abdul  Aziz.  The  vast  concourse 
of  people  swung  their  hats  and  shouted — the  windows  and 
house-tops  in  the  wide  vicinity  burst  into  a  snow-storm  of 
waving  handkerchiefs,  and  the  wavers  of  the  same  mingled 
their  cheers  with  those  of  the  masses  below.  It  was  a  stirring 
spectacle. 

But  the  two  central  figures  claimed  all  my  attention.  Was 
ever  such  a  contrast  set  up  before  a  multitude  till  then  ?  Na 
poleon,  in  military  uniform — a  long-bodied,  short-legged  man, 
fiercely  moustached,  old,  wrinkled,  with  eyes  half  closed,  and 
such  a  deep,  crafty,  scheming  expression  about  them ! — Na 
poleon,  bowing  ever  so  gently  to  the  loud  plaudits,  and  watch 
ing  every  thing  and  every  body  with  his  cat-eyes  from  under 
his  depressed  hat-brim,  as  if  to  discover  any  sign  that  those 
cheers  were  not  heartfelt  and  cordial. 


126 


NAPOLEON    III. 


NAPOLEON   III. 


Abdul   Aziz,   absolute   lord    of    the   Ottoman    Empire, — 

clad  in  dark  green 
European  clothes, 
almost  without  or 
nament  or  insignia 
of  rank;  a  red 
Turkish  fez  on  his 
head — a  short,  stout, 
dark  man,  black- 
bearded,  black- 
eyed,  stupid,  unpre 
possessing — a  man 
whose  whole  ap 
pearance  somehow 
suggested  that  if  he 
only  had  a  cleaver 
in  his  hand  and  a 
white  apron  on,  one 

would  not  be  at  all  surprised  to  hear  him  say :  "A  mutton- 
roast  to-day,  or  will 
you  have  a  nice 
porter-house  steak  ?" 
Napoleon  III., 
the  representative 
of  the  highest  mod 
ern  civilization,  pro 
gress,  and  refine 
ment;  Abdul-Aziz, 
•the  representative 
of  a  people  by  na 
ture  and  training 
filthy,  brutish,  ig 
norant,  unprogress- 
ive,  superstitious — 
and  a  government 
whose  Three  Graces 
Here  in  brilliant  Paris,  under 


ABDUL   AZIZ. 


are  Tyranny,  Rapacity,  Blood. 


NAPOLEON    III.  127 

this  majestic  Arch  of  Triumph,  the  First  Century  greets  the 
Nineteenth ! 

NAPOLEON  III.,  Emperor  of  France  !  Surrounded  by  shout 
ing  thousands,  by  military  pomp,  by  the  splendors  of  his 
capital  city,  and  companioned  by  kings  and  princes — this  is 
the  man  who  was  sneered  at,  and  reviled,  and  called  Bastard 
— yet  who  was  dreaming  of  a  crown  and  an  Empire  all  the 
while ;  who  was  driven  into  exile — but  carried  his  dreams 
with  him  ;  who  associated  with  the  common  herd  in  America, 
and  ran  foot-races  for  a  wager — but  still  sat  upon  a  throne,  in 
fancy  ;  who  braved  every  danger  to  go  to  his  dying  mother — 
and  grieved  that  she  could  not  be  spared  to  see  him  cast  aside 
his  plebeian  vestments  for  the  purple  of  royalty ;  who  kept 
his  faithful  watch  and  walked  his  weary  beat  a  common  po 
liceman  of  London — but  dreamed  the  while  of  a  coming 
night  when  he  should  tread  the  long-drawn  corridors  of  the 
Tuileries  ;  who  made  the  miserable  fiasco  of  Strasbourg ;  saw 
his  poor,  shabby  eagle,  forgetful  of  its  lesson,  refuse  to  perch 
upon  his  shoulder ;  delivered  his  carefully-prepared,  senten 
tious  burst  of  eloquence,  unto  unsympathetic  ears ;  found  him 
self  a  prisoner,  the  butt  of  small  wits,  a  mark  for  the  pitiless 
ridicule  of  all  the  world — yet  went  on  dreaming  of  corona 
tions  and  splendid  pageants,  as  before ;  who  lay  a  forgotten 
captive  in  the  dungeons  of  Ham — and  still  schemed  and 
planned  and  pondered  over  future  glory  and  future  power; 
President  of  France  at  last!  a  coup  d'etat,  and  surrounded  by 
applauding  armies,  welcomed  by  the  thunders  of  cannon,  he 
mounts  a  throne  and  waves  before  an  astounded  world  the 
sceptre  of  a  mighty  Empire !  Who  talks  of  the  marvels  of 
fiction?  Who  speaks  of  the  wonders  of  romance?  Who 
prates  of  the  tame  achievements  of  Aladdin  and  the  Magii  of 
Arabia  ? 

ABDUL- Aziz,  Sultan  of  Turkey,  Lord  of  the  Ottoman  Em 
pire  !  Born  to  a  throne ;  weak,  stupid,  ignorant,  almost,  as 
his  meanest  slave ;  chief  of  a  vast  royalty,  yet  the  puppet  of 
his  Premier  and  the  obedient  child  of  a  tyrannical  mother ;  a 
man  who  sits  upon  a  throne — the  beck  of  whose  finger  moves 


128  THE  SULTAN  OF  TURKEY. 

navies  and  armies — who  holds  in  his  hands  the  power  of  life 
and  death  over  millions — yet.  who  sleeps,  sleeps,  eats,  eats, 
idles  with  his  eight  hundred  concubines,  and  when  he  is  sur 
feited  with  eating  and  sleeping  and  idling,  and  would  rouse 
up  and  take  the  reins  of  government  and  threaten  to  be  a  Sul 
tan,  is  charmed  from  his  purpose  by  wary  Fuad  Pacha  with  a 
pretty  plan  for  a  new  palace  or  a  new  ship — charmed  away 
with  a  new  toy,  like  any  other  restless  child ;  a  man  who  sees 
his  people  robbed  and  oppressed  by  soulless  tax-gatherers,  but 
speaks  no  word  to  save  them ;  who  believes  in  gnomes,  and 
genii  and  the  wild  fables  of  the  Arabian  lights,  but  has 
small  regard  for  the  mighty  magicians  of  to-day,  and  is  ner 
vous  in  the  presence  of  their  mysterious  railroads  and  steam 
boats  and  telegraphs ;  who  would  see  undone  in  Egypt  all 
that  great  Mehemet  Ali  achieved,  and  would  prefer  rather  to 
forget  than  emulate  him ;  a  man  who  found  his  great  Empire  a 
blot  upon  the  earth — a  degraded,  poverty-stricken,  miserable, 
infamous  agglomeration  of  ignorance,  crime,  and  brutality, 
and  will  idle  away  the  allotted  days  of  his  trivial  life,  and  then 
pass  to  the  dust  and  the  worms  and  leave  it  so ! 

Napoleon  has  augmented  the  commercial  prosperity  of 
France,  in  ten  years,  to  such  a  degree  that  figures  can  hardly 
compute  it.  He  has  rebuilt  Paris,  and  has  partly  rebuilt 
every  city  in  the  State.  He  condemns  a  whole  street  at  a 
time,  assesses  the  damages,  pays  them  and  rebuilds  superbly. 
Then  speculators  buy  up  the  ground  and  sell,  but  the  original 
owner  is  given  the  first  choice  by  the  government  at  a  stated 
price  before  the  speculator  is  permitted  to  purchase.  But 
above  all  things,  he  has  taken  the  sole  control  of  the  Empire 
of  France  into  his  hands,  and  made  it  a  tolerably  free  land — 
for  people  who  will  not  attempt  to  go  too  far  in  medding  with 
government  affairs.  No  country  offers  greater  security  to  life 
and  property  than  France,  and  one  has  all  the  freedom  he 
wants,  but  no  license — no  license  to  interfere  with  any  body, 
or  make  any  one  uncomfortable. 

As  for  the  Sultan,  one  could  set  a  trap  any  where  and  catch 
a  dozen  abler  men  in  a  night. 


THE     REVIEW. — CANROBERT. 


129 


The  bands  struck  up,  and  the  brilliant  adventurer,  Napo 
leon  III.,  the  genius  of  Energy,  Persistence,  Enterprise ;  and 
the  feeble  Abdul- Aziz,  the  genius  of  Ignorance,  Bigotry  and 
Indolence,  prepared  for  the  Forward — March ! 

"We  saw  the  splendid  review,  we  saw  the  white-moustached 
old  Crimean  soldier,  Canrobert,  Marshal  of  France,  we  saw — 
well,  we  saw  every  thing,  and  then  we  went  home  satisfied. 


OHAPTEE  XIV. 

~TTT~E  went  to  see  the  Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame. — We  had 
VV  heard  of  it  before.  It  surprises  me,  sometimes,  to 
think  how  much  we  do  know,  and  how  intelligent  we  are. 
We  recognized  the  brown  old  Gothic  pile  in  a  moment ;  it  was 
like  the  pictures.  We  stood  at  a  little  distance  and  changed 
from  one  point  of  observation  to  another,  and  gazed  long  at 
its  lofty  square  towers  and  its  rich  front,  clustered  thick  with 
stony,-  mutilated  saints  who  had  been  looking  calmly  down 
from  their  perches  for  ages.  The  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  stood 
under  them  in  the  old  days  of  chivalry  and  romance,  and 
preached  the  third  Crusade,  more  than  six  hundred  years  ago ; 
and  since  that  day  they  have  stood  there  and  looked  quietly 
down  upon  the  most  thrilling  scenes,  the  grandest  pageants, 
the  most  extraordinary  spectacles  that  have  grieved  or  de 
lighted  Paris.  These  battered  and  broken-nosed  old  fellows 
saw  many  and  many  a  cavalcade  of  mail-clad  knights  come 
marching-  home  from  Holy  Land ;  they  heard  the  bells  above 
them  toll  the  signal  for  the  St.  Bartholomew's  Massacre,  and 
they  saw  the  slaughter  that  followed ;  later,  they  saw  the 
Reign  of  Terror,  the  carnage  of  the  Revolution,  the  overthrow 
of  a  king,  the  coronation  of  two  Napoleons,  the  christening  of 
the  young  prince  that  lords  it  over  a  regiment  of  servants  in 
the  Tuileries  to-day — and  they  may  possibly  continue  to  stand 
there  until  they  see  the  Napoleon  dynasty  swept  away  and  the 
banners  of  a  great  Republic  floating  above  its  ruins.  I  wish 
these  old  parties  could  speak.  They  could  tell  a  tale  worth 
the  listening  to. 

They  say  that  a  pagan  temple  stood  where  Notre  Dame  now 


JEAN    SANS-PEUR'S   ADDITION.  131 

stands,  in  the  old  Roman  days,  eighteen  or  twenty  centuries 
ago — remains  of  it  are  still  preserved  in  Paris ;  and  that  a 
Christian  church  took  its  place  about  A.  D.  300  ;  another  took 
the  place  of  that  in  A.  D.  500  ;  and  that  the  foundations  of  the 
present  Cathedral  were  laid  about  A.  D.  1100.  The  ground 
ought  to  be  measurably  sacred  l>y  this  time,  one  would  think. 
One  portion  of  this  noble  old  edifice  is  suggestive  of  the  quaint 
fashions  of  ancient  times.  It  was  built  by  Jean  Sans-Peur, 
Duke  of  Burgundy,  to  set  his  conscience  at  rest — he  had  as 
sassinated  the  Duke  of  Orleans.  Alas !  those  good  old  times 
are  gone,  when  a  murderer  could  wipe  the  stain  from  his  name 
and  soothe  his  troubles  to  sleep  simply  by  getting  out  his  bricks 
ajid  mortar  and  building  an  addition  to  a  church. 

The  portals  of  the  great  western  front  are  bisected  by  square 
pillars.  They  took  the  central  one  away,  in  1852,  on  the  oc 
casion  of  thanksgivings  for  the  reinstitution  of  the  Presiden 
tial  power — but  precious  soon  they  had  occasion  to  reconsider 
that  motion  and  put  it  back  again !  And  they  did. 

We  loitered  through  the  grand  aisles  for  an  hour  or  two, 
staring  up  at  the  rich  stained  glass  windows  embellished  with 
blue  and  yellow  and  crimson  saints  and  martyrs,  and  trying 
to  admire  the  numberless  great  pictures  in  the  chapels,  and 
then  we  were  admitted  to  the  sacristy  and  show^n  the  magnifi 
cent  robes  which  the  Pope  wore  when  he  crowned  Napoleon 
I.;  a  wagon-load  of  solid  gold  and  silver  utensils  used  in  the 
great  public  processions  and  ceremonies  of  the  church ;  some 
nails  of  the  true  cross,  a  fragment  of  the  cross  itself,  a  part  of 
the  crown  of  thorns.  "We  had  already  seen  a  large  piece  of  the 
true  cross  in  a  church  in  the  Azores,  but  no  nails.  They 
showed  us  likewise  the  bloody  robe  which  that  Archbishop  of 
Paris  wore  who  exposed  his  sacred  person  and  braved  the 
wrath  of  the  insurgents  of  1848,  to  mount  the  barricades  and 
hold  aloft  the  olive  branch  of  peace  in  the  hope  of  stopping 
the  slaughter.  His  noble  effort  cost  him  his  life.  He  was 
shot  dead.  They  showed  us  a  cast  of  his  face,  taken  after 
death,  the  bullet  that  killed  him,  and  the  two  vertebrae  in 
which  it  lodged.  These  people  have  a  somewhat  singular 


132 


THE     MORGUE. 


taste  in  the  matter  of  relics.  Ferguson  told  us  that  the 
silver  cross  which  the  good  Archbishop  wore  at  his  girdle  was 
seized  and  thrown  into  the  Seine,  where  it  lay  embedded  in 
the  mud  for  fifteen  years,  and  then  an  angel  appeared  to  a 
priest  and  told  him  where  to  dive  for  it ;  he  did  dive  for  it  and 
got  it,  and  now  it  is  there  on  exhibition  at  Notre  Dame,  to  be 
inspected  by  any  body  wrho  feels  an  interest  in  inanimate  ob 
jects  of  miraculous  intervention. 


Next  we  went 
to  visit  the 
Morgue,  that 
horrible  recep- 
tacle  for  the 
dead  who  die 
mysteriously 
and  leave  the 

•  1 1 1 1  i  ^^BHWHiBi  manner  of  their 
taking  off  a 
dismal  secret. 
We  stood  be- 

THE  MORGUE.  fore  a  grating 

and        looked 

through  into  a  room  which  was  hung  all  about  with  the 
clothing  of  dead  men ;  coarse  blouses,  water-soaked  ;  the  deli 
cate  garments  of  women  and  children ;  patrician  vestments, 


THE     MORGUE.  133 

hacked  and  stabbed  and  stained  with  red ;  a  hat  that  was 
crushed  and  bloody.  On  a  slanting  stone  lay  a  drowned 
man,  naked,  swollen,  purple ;  clasping  the  fragment  of  a  bro 
ken  bush  with  a  grip  which  death  had  so  petrified  that  human 
strength  could  not  unloose  it — mute  witness  of  the  last  despair 
ing  effort  to  save  the  life  that  was  doomed  beyond  all  help.  A 
stream  of  water  trickled  ceaselessly  over  the  hideous  face.  We 
knew  that  the  body  and  the  clothing  were  there  for  identifica 
tion  by  friends,  but  still  we  wondered  if  any  body  could  love  that 
repulsive  object  or  grieve  for  its  loss.  We  grew  medita 
tive  and  wondered  if,  some  forty  years  ago,  when  the  mother 
of  that  ghastly  thing  was  dandling  it  upon  her  knee,  and  kiss 
ing  it  and  petting  it  and  displaying  it  with  satisfied  pride  to 
the  passers-by,  a  prophetic  vision  of  this  dread  ending  ever 
fiitted  through  her  brain.  I  half  feared  that  the  mother,  or  the 
wife  or  a  brother  of  the  dead  man  might  come  while  we  stood 
there,  but  nothing  of  the  kind  occurred.  Men  and  women 
came,  and  some  looked  eagerly  in,  and  pressed  their  faces 
against  the  bars ;  others  glanced  carelessly  at  the  body,  and 
turned  away  with  a  disappointed  look — people,  I  thought,  who 
live  upon  strong  excitements,  and  who  attend  the  exhibitions 
of  the  Morgue  regularly,  just  as  other  people  go  to  see  thea 
trical  spectacles  every  night.  When  one  of  these  looked  in  and 
passed  on,  I  could  not  help  thinking — 

"  Now  this  don't  afford  you  any  satisfaction — a  party  with 
his  head  shot  off  is  what  you  need." 

One  nteht  we  went  to  the  celebrated  Jardin  Mabille.  but 

»  O  ^ 

only  staid  a  little  while.  We  wanted  to  see  some  of  this  kind 
of  Paris  life,  however,  and  therefore,  the  next  night  we  wrent 
to  a  similar  place  of  entertainment  in  a  great  garden  in  the 
suburb  of  Asnie'res.  We  went  to  the  railroad  depot,  toward 
evening,  and  Ferguson  got  tickets  for  a  second-class  carriage. 
Such  a  perfect  jam  of  people  I  have  not  often  seen — but  there 
was  no  noise,  no  disorder,  no  rowdyism.  Some  of  the  women 
and  young  girls  that  entered  the  train  we  knew  to  be  of  the 
demi-monde,  but  others  we  were  not  at  all  sure  about. 

The  girls  and  women  in  our  carriage  behaved  themselves 


134  BALAAM'S    FRIEND    SPEAKS. 

modestly  and  becomingly,  all  the  way  out,  except  that  they 
smoked.  "When  we  arrived  at  the  garden  in  Asnieres,  we  paid 
a  franc  or  two  admission,  and  entered  a  place  which  had  flowT- 
er-beds  in  it,  and  grass  plats,  and  long,  curving  rows  of  orna 
mental  shrubbery,  with  here  and  there  a  secluded  bower  con 
venient  for  eating  ice-cream  in.  We  moved  along  the  sinuous 
gravel  walks,  with  the  great  concourse  of  girls  and  young  men, 
and  suddenly  a  domed  and  filagreed  white  temple,  starred 
over  and  over  and  over  again  with  brilliant  gas-jets,  burst  upon 
us  like  a  fallen  sun.  Near  by  was  a  large,  handsome  house 
with  its  ample  front  illuminated  in  the  same  way,  and  above 
its  roof  floated  the  Star  Spangled  Banner  of  America. 

"  Well !"  I  said.  "  How  is  this  ?"  It  nearly  took  my  breath 
away. 

Ferguson  said  an  American — a  New  Yorker — kept  the 
place,  and  was  carrying  on  quite  a  stirring  opposition  to  the 
Jardin  Mdbille. 

Crowds,  composed  of  both  sexes  and  nearly  all  ages,  were 
frisking  about  the  garden  or  sitting  in  the  open  air  in  front  of 
the  flag-staff  and  the  temple,  drinking  wine  and  coffee,  or 
smoking.  The  dancing  had  not  begun,  yet.  Ferguson  said 
there  was  to  be  an  exhibition.  The  famous  Blondin  was  going 
to  perform  on  a  tight-rope  in  another  part  of  the  garden.  We 
went  thither.  Here  the  light  was  dim,  and  the  masses  of  peo 
ple  were  pretty  closely  packed  together.  And  now  I  made  a 
mistake  which  any  donkey  might  make,  but  a  sensible  man 
never.  I  committed  an  error  which  I  find  myself  repeating 
every  day  of  my  life. — Standing  right  before  a  young  lady,  I 
said — 

"  Dan,  just  look  at  this  girl,  how  beautiful  she  is !" 

"  I  thank  you  more  for  the  evident  sincerity  of  the  compli 
ment,  sir,  than  for  the  extraordinary  publicity  you  have  given 
;to  it !"  This  in  good,  pure  English. 

We  took  a  walk,  but  my  spirits  were  very,  very  sadly  damp 
ened.  I  did  not  feel  right  comfortable  for  some  time  after 
ward.  Why  will  people  be  so  stupid  as  to  suppose  themselves 
the  only  .foreigners  among  a  crowd  of  ten  thousand  persons? 


BLONDIN     IN     A     FLAME. 


135 


But  Blondin  came  out  shortly.  He  appeared  on  a  stretched 
cable,  far  away  above  the  sea  of  tossing  hats  and  handker 
chiefs,  and  in  the  glare  of  the  hundreds  of  rockets  that  whizzed 
heavenward  by  him  he  looked  like  a  wee  insect.  He  balanced 


WE  TOOK  A  WALK. 


his  pole  and  walked  the  length  of  his  rope — two  or  three  hun 
dred  feet;  he  came  back  and  got  a  man  and  carried  him 
across ;  he  returned  to  the  centre  and  danced  a  jig ;  next  he 
performed  some  gymnastic  and  balancing  feats  too  perilous  to 
afford  a  pleasant  spectacle ;  and  he  finished  by  fastening  to  his 
person  a  thousand  Roman  candles,  Catherine  wheels,  serpents 
and  rockets  of  all  manner  of  brilliant  colors,  setting  them  on 
fire  all  at  once  and  walking  and  waltzing  across  his  rope  again 
in  a  blinding  blaze  of  glory  that  lit  up  the  garden  and  the 
people's  faces  like  a  great  conflagration  at  midnight. 

The  dance  had  begun,  and  we  adjourned  to  the  temple. 
Within  it  was  a  drinking  saloon ;  and  all  around  it  was  a 


136 


THE  OUTRAGEOUS  "CAN-CAN." 


broad  circular  platform  for  the  dancers.  I  backed  up  against 
the  wall  of  the  temple,  and  waited.  Twenty  sets  formed,  the 
music  struck  up,  and  then — I  placed  my  hands  before  my  face 
for  very  shame.  But  I  looked  through  my  fingers.  They 

were  dancing  the  renowned  "  Can 
can"  A  handsome  girl  in  the 
set  before  me  tripped  forward 
lightly  to  meet  the  opposite  gen 
tleman — tripped  back  again, 
grasped  her  dresses  vigorously 
on  both  sides  with  her  hands, 
raised  them  pretty  high,  danced 
an  extraordinary  jig  that  had 
more  activity  and  exposure  about 
it  than  any  jig  I  ever  saw  before, 
and  then,  drawing  her  clothes 
still  higher,  she  advanced  gaily 
to  the  centre  and  launched  a  vi 
cious  kick  full  at  her  vis-a-vis  that 
must  infallibly  have  removed  his 
nose  if  he  had  been  seven  feet 
high.  It  was  a  mercy  he  was 
only  six. 

That  is  the  can-can.  The  idea 
of  it  is  to  dance  as  wildly,  as 
noisily,  as  furiously  as  you  can ; 

expose  yourself  as  much  as  possible  if  you  are  a  woman ;  and 
kick  as  high  as  you  can,  no  matter  which  sex  you  belong  to. 
There  is  no  word  of  exaggeration  in  this.  Any  of  the  staid, 
respectable,  aged  people  who  were  there  that  night  can  testify 
to  the  truth  of  that  statement.  There  were  a  good  many  such 
people  present.  I  suppose  French  morality  is  not  of  that 
straight-laced  description  which  is  shocked  at  trifles. 

I  moved  aside  and  took  a  general  view  of  the  can-can. 
Shouts,  laughter,  furious  music,  a  bewildering  chaos  of  darting 
and  intermingling  forms,  stormy  jerking  and  snatching  of  gay 
dresses,  bobbing  heads,  flying  arms,  lightning-flashes  of  white- 


CAN-CAN. 


THE     LOWER     PALACE.  137 

stockinged  calves  and  dainty  slippers  in  the  air,  and  then  a 
grand  final  rush,  riot,  a  terrific  hubbub  and  a  wild  stampede ! 
Heavens !  Nothing  like  it  has  been  seen  on  earth  since 
trembling  Tana  O'Shanter  saw  the  devil  and  the  witches  at 
their  orgies  that  stormy  night  in  "  Alloway's  auld  haunted 
kirk." 

We  visited  the  Louvre,  at  a  time  when  we  had  no  silk  pur 
chases  in  view,  and  looked  at  its  miles  of  paintings  by  the  old 
masters.  Some  of  them  were  beautiful,  but  at  the  same  time 
they  carried  such  evidences  about  them  of  the  cringing  spirit 
of  those  great  men  that  we  found  small  pleasure  in  examining 
them.  Their  nauseous  adulation  of  princely  patrons  was  more 
prominent  to  me  and  chained  my  attention  more  surely  than 
the  charms  of  color  and  expression  which  are  claimed  to  be 
in  the  pictures.  Gratitude  for  kindnesses  is  well,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  some  of  those  artists  carried  it  so  far  that  it  ceased 
to  be  gratitude,  and  became  worship.  If  there  is  a  plausible 
excuse  for  the  worship  of  men,  then  by  all  means  let  us  forgive 
Rubens  and  his  brethren. 

But  I  will  drop  the  subject,  lest  I  say  something  about  the 
old  masters  that  might  as  well  be  left  unsaid. 

Of  course  we  drove  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  that  limitless 
park,  with  its  forests,  its  lakes,  its  cascades,  and  its  broad  ave 
nues.  There  were  thousands  upon  thousands  of  vehicles 
abroad,  and  the  scene  was  full  of  life  and  gayety.  •  There  were 
very  common  hacks,  with  father  and  mother  and  all  the  chil 
dren  in  them ;  conspicuous  little  open  carriages  with  celebrated 
ladies  of  questionable  reputation  in  them ;  there  were  Dukes  and 
Duchesses  abroad,  with  gorgeous  footmen  perched  behind,  and 
equally  gorgeous  outriders  perched  on  each  of  the  six  horses ; 
there  were  blue  and  silver,  and  green  and  gold,  and  pink  and 
black,  and  all  sorts  and  descriptions  of  stunning  and  startling 
liveries  out,  and  I  almost  yearned  to  be  a  flunkey  myself,  for 
the  sake  of  the  fine  clothes. 

But  presently  the  Emperor  came  along  and  he  out-shone 
them  all.  He  was  preceded  by  a  body  guard  of  gentlemen  on 
horseback  in  showy  uniforms,  his  carriage-horses  (there  ap- 


138  RESERVATION     OF     NOTED     THINGS. 

peared  to  be  somewhere  in  the  remote  neighborhood  of  a  thou 
sand  of  them,)  were  bestridden  by  gallant  looking  fellows,  also 
in  stylish  uniforms,  and  after  the  carriage  followed  another  de 
tachment  of  body-guards.  Every  body  got  out  of  the  way; 
every  body  bowed  to  the  Emperor  and  his  friend  the  Sultan, 
and  they  went  by  on  a  swinging  trot  and  disappeared. 

I  will  not  describe  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  I  can  not  do  it. 
It  is  simply  a  beautiful,  cultivated,  endless,  wonderful  wilder 
ness.  It  is  an  enchanting  place.  It  is  in  Paris,  now,  one  may 
say,  but  a  crumbling  old  cross  in  one  portion  of  it  reminds  one 
that  it  was  not  always  so.  The  cross  marks  the  spot  where  a 
celebrated  troubadour  was  waylaid  and  murdered  in  the  four 
teenth  century.  It  was  in  this  park  that  that  fellow  with  an 
unpronounceable  name  made  the  attempt  upon  the  Russian 
Czar's  life  last  spring  with  a  pistol.  The  bullet  struck  a  tree. 
Ferguson  showed  us  the  place.  Now  in  America  that  inter 
esting  tree  would  be  chopped  down  or  forgotten  within  the 
next  live  years,  but  it  will  be  treasured  here.  The  guides  will 
point  it  out  to  visitors  for  the  next  eight  hundred  years,  and 
when  it  decays  and  falls  down  they  will  put  up  another  there 
and  go  on  with  the  same  old  story  just  the  same. 


CHAPTER    XT. 


ONE  of  our  pleasantest  visits  was  to  Pere  la  Chaise,  the 
national  bury  ing-ground  of  France,  the  honored  resting- 
place  of  some  of  her  greatest  and  best  children,  the  last  home 
of  scores  of  illustrious  men  and  women  who  were  born  to  no 
titles,  but  achieved  fame  by  their  own  energy  and  their  own 
genius.  It  is  a  solemn  city  of  winding  streets,  and  of  minia 
ture  marble  temples  and  mansions  of  the  dead  gleaming  white 
from  out  a  wilderness  of  foliage  and  fresh  flowers.  Not  every 
city  is  so  well  peopled  as  this,  or  has  so  ample  an  area  within 
its  walls.  Few  palaces  exist  in  any  city,  that  are  so  exquisite 
in  design,  so  rich  in  art,  so  costly  in  material,  so  graceful,  so 
beautiful. 

We  had  stood  in  the  ancient  church  of  St.  Denis,  where 
the  marble  effigies  of  thirty  generations  of  kings  and  queens 
lay  stretched  at  length  upon  the  tombs,  and  the  sensations 
invoked  were  startling  and  novel ;  the  curious  armor,  the  ob 
solete  costumes,  the  placid  faces,  the  hands  placed  palm  to 
palm  in  eloquent  supplication — it  was  a  vision  of  gray  anti 
quity.  It  seemed  curious  enough  to  be  standing  face  to  face,  as 
it  were,  with  old  Dagobert  I.,  and  Clovis  and  Charlemagne, 
those  vague,  colossal  heroes,  those  shadows,  those  myths  of  a 
thousand  years  ago !  I  touched  their  dust-covered  faces  with 
my  finger,  but  Dagobert  was  deader  than  the  sixteen  centu 
ries  that  have  passed  over  him,  Clovis  slept  well  after  his 
labor  for  Christ,  and  old  Charlemagne  went  on  dreaming  of 
his  paladins,  of  bloody  Koncesvalles,  and  gave  no  heed  to 
me. 


14:0          AMONG  THE  GREAT  DEAD. 

The  great  names  of  Pere  la  Chaise  impress  one,  too,  but 
differently.  There  the  suggestion  brought  constantly  to  his 
mind  is,  that  this  place  is  sacred  to  a  nobler  royalty — the  roy 
alty  of  heart  and  brain.  Every  faculty  of  mind,  every  noble 
trait  of  human  nature,  every  high  occupation  which  men 
engage  in  seems  represented  by  a  famous  name.  The  effect  is 
a  curious  medley.  Davoust  and  Massena,  who  wrought  in 
many  a  battle-tragedy,  are  here,  and  so  also  is  Eachel,  of  equal 
renown  in  mimic  tragedy  on  the  stage.  The  Abbe  Sicard 
sleeps  here — the  first  great  teacher  of  the  deaf  and  dumb — a 
man  whose  heart  went  out  to  every  unfortunate,  and  whose 
life  was  given  to  kindly  offices  in  their  service ;  and  not  far 
off,  in  repose  and  peace  at  last,  lies  Marshal  Ney,  whose 
stormy  spirit  knew  no  music  like  the  bugle  call  to  arms.  The 
man  who  originated  public  gas-lighting,  and  that  other  bene 
factor  who  introduced  the  cultivation  of  the  potato  and  thus 
blessed  millions  of  his  starving  countrymen,  lie  with  the 
Prince  of  Masserano,  arid  with  exiled  queens  and  princes  of 
Further  India.  Gay-Lussac  the  chemist,  Laplace  the  astron 
omer,  Larrey  the  surgeon,  de  Seze  the  advocate,  are  here,  and 
with  them  are  Talma,  Bellini,  Rubini ;  de  Balzac,  Beaumar- 
chais,  Beranger ;  Moliere  and  Lafontaine,  and  scores  of  other 
men  whose  names  and  whose  worthy  labors  are  as  familiar  in 
the  remote  by-places  of  civilization  as  are  the  historic  deeds 
of  the  kings  and  princes  that  sleep  in  the  marble  vaults  of  St. 
Denis. 

But  among  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  tombs  in  Pere 
la  Chaise,  there  is  one  that  no  man,  no  woman,  no  youth  of 
either  sex,  ever  passes  by  without  stopping  to  examine. 
Every  visitor  has  a  sort  of  indistinct  idea  of  the  history  of  its 
dead,  and  comprehends  that  homage  is  due  there,  but  not  one 
in  twenty  thousand  clearly  remembers  the  story  of  that  tomb 
and  its  romantic  occupants.  This  is  the  grave  of  Abelard 
and  Heloise — a  grave  which  has  been  more  revered,  more 
widely  known,  more  written  and  sung  about  and  wept  over, 
for  seven  hundred  years,  than  any  other  in  Christendom,  save 
only  that  of  the  Saviour.  All  visitors  linger  pensively  about 


THE     SHRINE     OF     DISAPPOINTED     LOVE. 


141 


it ;  all  young  people  capture  and  carry  away  keepsakes  and 
mementoes  of  it;  all  Parisian  youths  and  maidens  who  are 
disappointed  in  love  come  there  to  bail  out  when  they  are  full 
of  tears ;  yea,  many  stricken  lovers  make  pilgrimages  'to  this 
shrine  from  distant  provinces  to  weep  and  wail  and  "grit" 
their  teeth  over  their  heavy  sorrows,  and  to  purchase  the  sym 
pathies  of  the  chastened  spirits  of  that  tomb  with  offerings  of 
immortelles  and  budding  flowers. 

Go  when  you  will,  you  find  somebody  snuffling  over  that 
tomb.     Go  when  you  will,  you  find  it  furnished  with  those 


GRAVE  OF   ABELARD  AND   HELOISE. 

bouquets  and  immortelles.  Go  when  you  will,  you  find  a 
gravel-train  from  Marseilles  arriving  to  supply  the  deficiencies 
caused  by  memento-cabbaging  vandals  whose  affections  have 
miscarried. 

Yet  who  really  knows  the  story  of  Abelard  and  Heloise  ? 
Precious  few  people.  The  names  are  perfectly  familiar  to 
every  body,  and  that  is  about  all.  With  infinite  pains  I  have 
acquired  a  knowledge  of  that  history,  and  I  propose  to  narrate 
it  here,  partly  for  the  honest  information  of  the  public  and 
partly  to  show  that  public  that  they  have  been  wasting  a  good 
deal  of  marketable  sentiment  very  unnecessarily. 

STORY    OF   ABELARD   AND    HELOISE. 

Heloise  was  born  seven  hundred  and  sixty-six  years  ago. 


142   THE  STORY  OF  ABELARD  AND  HELOISE. 


She  may  have  had  parents.  There  is  no  telling.  She  lived 
with  her  uncle  Fulbert,  a  canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Paris.  I 
do  not  know  what  a  canon  of  a  cathedral  is,  but  that  is  what 
he  was.  He  was  nothing  more  than  a  sort  of  a  mountain  how 
itzer,  likely,  because  they  had  no  heavy  artillery  in  those  days. 
Suffice  it,  then,  that  Heloise  lived  with  her  uncle  the  howitzer, 

and  was  happy. — She 
spent  the  most  of  her 
childhood  in  the  con 
vent  of  Argenteuil — 
never  heard  of  Ar 
genteuil  before,  but 
suppose  there  was 
really  such  a  place. 
She  then  returned  to 
her  uncle,  the  old 
gun,  or  son  of  a  gun, 
as  the  case  may  be, 
and  he  taught  her  to 
write  and  speak  Lat 
in,  which  was  the 
language  of  literature  and  polite  society  at  that  period. 

Just  at  this  time,  Pierre  Abelard,  who  had  already  made 
himself  widely  famous  as  a  rhetorician,  came  to  found  a  school 
of  rhetoric  in  Paris.  The  originality  of  his  principles,  his 
eloquence,  and  his  great  physical  strength  and  beauty  created 
a  profound  sensation.  He  saw  Heloise,  and  was  captivated  by 
her  blooming  youth,  her  beauty  and  her  charming  disposition, 
lie  wrote  to  her ;  she  answered.  He  wrote  again,  she  answered 
again.  He  was  now  in  love.  He  longed  to  know  her — to 
speak  to  her  face  to  face. 

His  school  was  near  Fulbert's  house.  He  asked  Fulbert  to 
allow  him  to  call.  The  good  old  swivel  saw  here  a  rare  op 
portunity  :  his  niece,  whom  he  so  much  loved,  would  absorb 
knowledge  from  this  man,  and  it  would  not  cost  him  a  cent. 
Such  was  Fulbert — penurious. 

Fulbert's  first  name  is  not  mentioned  by  any  author,  which 


A   PAIR  OF   CANONS,    13TH    CENTURY. 


VILLAINY.  143 

is  unfortunate.  However,  George  W.  Fulbert  will  answer  for 
him  as  well  as  any  other.  We  will  let  him  go  at  that.  He 
asked  Abelard  to  teach  her. 

Abelard  was  glad  enough  of  the  opportunity.  He  came 
often  and  staid  long.  A  letter  of  his  shows  in  its  very  first 
sentence  that  he  came  under  that  friendly  roof  like  a  cold- 
hearted  villain  as  he  was,  with  the  deliberate  intention  of 
debauching  a  confiding,  innocent  girl.  This  is  the  letter : 

"  I  can  not  cease  to  be  astonished  at  the  simplicity  of  Fulbert ;  I  was  as  much 
surprised  as  if  he  had  placed  a  lamb  in  the  power  of  a  hungry  wolf.  Heloise  and 
I,  under  pretext  of  study,  gave  ourselves  up  wholly  to  love,  and  the  solitude  that 
love  seeks  our  studies  procured  for  us.  Books  were  open  before  us,  but  we  spoke 
oftener  of  love  than  philosophy,  and  kisses  came  more  readily  from  our  lips  than 
words." 

And  so,  exulting  over  an  honorable  confidence  wrhich  to  his 
degraded  instinct  was  a  ludicrous  "  simplicity,"  this  unmanly 
Abelard  seduced  the  niece  of  the  man  whose  guest  he  was. 
Paris  found  it  out.  Fulbert  was  told  of  it — told  often — but 
refused  to  believe  it.  He  could  not  comprehend  how  a  man 
could  be  so  depraved  as  to  use  the  sacred  protection  and 
security  of  hospitality  as  a  means  for  the  commission  of  such 
a  crime  as  that.  But  when  he  heard  the  rowdies  in  the  streets 
singing  the  love-songs  of  Abelard  to  Heloise,  the  case  was  too 
plain — love-songs  come  not  properly  within  the  teachings  of 
rhetoric  and  philosophy. 

He  drove  Abelard  from  his  house.  Abelard  returned 
secretly  and  carried  Heloise  away  to  Palais,  in  Brittany,  his 
native  country.  Here,  shortly  afterward,  she  bore  a  son,  who, 
from  his  rare  beauty,  was  surnamed  Astrolabe — William  G. 
The  girl's  flight  enraged  Fulbert,  and  he  longed  for  vengeance, 
but  feared  to  strike  lest  retaliation  visit  Heloise — for  he  still 
loved  her  tenderly.  At  length  Abelard  offered  to  marry 
Heloise — but  on  a  shameful  condition :  that  the  marriage 
should  be  kept  secret  from  the  world,  to  the  end  that  (while 
her  good  name  remained  a  wreck,  as  before,)  his  priestly  repu 
tation  might  be  kept  untarnished.  It  was  like  that  miscreant. 
Fulbert  saw  his  opportunity  and  consented.  He  would  see 


144 


THE     MARRIAGE. 


the  parties  married,  and  then  violate  the  confidence  of  the 
man  who  had  taught  him  that  trick ;  he  would  divulge  the 
secret  and  so  remove  somewhat  of  the  obloquy  that  attached 
to  his  niece's  fame.  But  the  niece  suspected  his  scheme.  She 
refused  the  marriage,  at  first ;  she  said  Fulbert  would  betray 
the  secret  to  save  her,  and  besides,  she  did  not  wish  to  drag 
down  a  lover  who  was  so  gifted,  so  honored  by  the  world,  and 
who  had  such  a  splendid  career  before  him.  It  was  noble, 
self-sacrificing  love,  and  characteristic  of  the  pure-souled 
Heloise,  but  it  was  not  good  sense. 

But  she  was  overruled,  and  the  private  marriage  took  place. 
Now  for  Fulbert !     The  heart  so  wounded  should  be  healed  at 


THE    PRIVATE   MARRIAGE. 


last ;  the  proud  spirit  so  tortured  should  find  rest  again ;  the 
humbled  head  should  be  lifted  up  once  more.  He  pro 
claimed  the  marriage  in  the  high  places  of  the  city,  and  re 
joiced  that  dishonor  had  departed  from  his  house.  But  lo ! 
Abelard  denied  the  marriage !  Heloise  denied  it !  The 
people,  knowing  the  former  circumstances,  might  have  be 
lieved  Fulbert,  had  only  Abelard  denied  it,  but  when  the  per 
son  chiefly  interested — the  girl  herself — denied  it,  they  laughed 
despairing  Fulbert  to  scorn. 


LOVE     AND     INDIFFERENCE.  U5 

The  poor  canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Paris  was  spiked  again. 
The  last  hope  of  repairing  the  wrong  that  had  been  done  his 
house  was  gone.  What  next  ?  Human  nature  suggested  re 
venge.  He  compassed  it.  The  historian  says : 

"  Ruffians,  hired  by  Fulbert,  fell  upon  Abelard  by  night,  and  inflicted  upon  him 
a  terrible  and  nameless  mutilation." 

I  am  seeking  the  last  resting-place  of  those  "ruffians." 
When  I  find  it  I  shall  shed  some  tears  on  it,  and  stack  up 
some  bouquets  and  immortelles,  and  cart  away  from  it  some 
gravel  whereby  to  remember  that  howsoever  blotted  by 
crime  their  lives  may  have  been,  these  ruffians  did  one  just 
deed,  at  any  rate,  albeit  it  was  not  warranted  by  the  strict 
letter  of  the  law. 

Heloise  entered  a  convent  and  gave  good-bye  to  the  world 
and  its  pleasures  for  all  time.  For  twelve  years  she  never 
heard  of  Abelard — never  even  heard  his  name  mentioned. 
She  had  become  prioress  of  Argenteuil,  and  led  a  life  of  com 
plete  seclusion.  She  happened  one  day  to  see  a  letter  written 
by  him,  in  which  he  narrated  his  own  history.  She  cried  over 
it,  and  wrote  him.  He  answered,  addressing  her  as  his  "  sis 
ter  in  Christ."  They  continued  to  correspond,  she  in  the  un- 
weighed  language  of  unwavering  affection,  he  in  the  chilly 
phraseology  of  the  polished  rhetorician.  She  poured  out  her 
heart  in  passionate,  disjointed  sentences;  he  replied  with 
finished  essays,  divided  deliberately  into  heads  and  sub-heads, 
premises  and  argument.  She  showered  upon  him  the  tender- 
est  epithets  that  love  could  devise,  he  addressed  her  from  the 
North  Pole  of  his  frozen  heart  as  the  "  Spouse  of  Christ !" 
The  abandoned  villain ! 

On  account  of  her  too  easy  government  of  her  nuns,  some 
disreputable  irregularities  were  discovered  among  them,  and 
the  Abbot  of  St.  Denis  broke  up  her  establishment.  Abelard 
was  the  official  head  of  the  monastery  of  St.  Gildas  de  Ruys, 
at  that  time,  and  when  he  heard  of  her  homeless  condition  a 
sentiment  of  pity  was  aroused  in  his  breast  (it  is  a  wonder  the 
unfamiliar  emotion  did  not  blow  his  head  off,)  and  he  placed 

10 


146  KETRIBUTION. 

her  and  her  troop  in  the  little  oratory  of  the  Paraclete,  a  re- 
ligious  establishment  which  he  had  founded.  She  had  many 
privations  and  sufferings  to  undergo  at  first,  but  her  worth 
and  her  gentle  disposition  won  influential  friends  for  her,  and 
she  built  up  a  wealthy  and  flourishing  nunnery.  She  became 
a  great  favorite  with  the  heads  of  the  church,  and  also  the 
people,  though  she  seldom  appeared  in  public.  She  rapidly 
advanced  in  esteem,  in  good  report  and  in  usefulness,  and 
Abelard  as  rapidly  lost  ground.  The  Pope  so  honored  her 
that  he  made  her  the  head  of  her  order.  Abelard,  a  man  of 
splendid  talents,  and  ranking  as  the  first  debater  of  his  time, 
became  timid,  irresolute,  and  distrustful  of  his  powers.  He 
only  needed  a  great  misfortune  to  topple  him  from  the  high 
position  he  held  in  the  world  of  intellectual  excellence,  and  it 
came.  Urged  by  kings  and  princes  to  meet  the  subtle  St. 
Bernard  in  debate  and  crush  him,  he  stood  up  in  the  presence 
of  a  royal  and  illustrious  assemblage,  and  when  his  antagonist 
had  finished  he  looked  about  him,  and  stammered  a  com 
mencement  ;  but  his  courage  failed  him,  the  cunning  of  his 
tongue  was  gone  :  with  his  speech  unspoken,  he  trembled  and 
sat  down,  a  disgraced  and  vanquished  champion. 

He  died  a  nobody,  and  was  buried  at  Cluny,  A.  D.,  1144. 
They  removed  his  body  to  the  Paraclete  afterward,  and  when 
Heloise  died,  twenty  years  later,  they  buried  her  with  him, 
in  accordance  with  her  last  wish.  He  died  at  the  ripe  age  of 

±          o 

64,  and  she  at  63.  After  the  bodies  had  remained  entombed 
three  hundred  years,  they  were  removed  once  more.  They 
were  removed  again  in  1800,  and  finally,  seventeen  years  after 
ward,  they  were  taken  up  and  transferred  to  Pere  la  Chaise, 
where  they  will  remain  in  peace  and  quiet  until  it  comes  time 
for  them  to  get  up  and  move  again. 

History  is  silent  concerning  the  last  acts  of  the  mountain 
howitzer.  Let  the  world  say  what  it  will  about  him,  /,  at 
least,  shall  always  respect  the  memory  and  sorrow  for  the 
abused  trust,  and  the  broken  heart,  and  the  troubled  spirit  of 
the  old  smooth-bore.  Rest  and  repose  be  his ! 

Such  is  the  story  of  Abelard  and  Heloise.     Such  is  the  his- 


"ENGLISH    SPOKEN    HERE."  147 

tory  that  Lamartine  lias  shed  such  cataracts  of  tears  over. 
But  that  man  never  could  come  within  the  influence  of  a  sub 
ject  in  the  least  pathetic  without  overflowing  his  banks.  He 
ought  to  be  dammed — or  leveed,  I  should  more  properly  say. 
Such  is  the  history — not  as  it  is  usually  told,  but  as  it  is  when 
stripped  of  the  nauseous  sentimentality  that  would  enshrine 
for  our  loving  worship  a  dastardly  seducer  like  Pierre  Abelard. 
I  have  not  a  word  to  say  against  the  misused,  faithful  girl,  and 
would  not  withhold  from  her  grave  a  single  one  of  those 
simple  tributes  which  blighted  youths  and  maidens  offer  to 
her  memory,  but  I  am  sorry  enough  that  I  have  not  time  and 
opportunity  to  write  four  or  five  volumes  of  my  opinion  of  her 
friend  the  founder  of  the  Parachute,  or  the  Paraclete,  or  what 
ever  it  was. 

The  tons  of  sentiment  I  have  wasted  on  that  unprincipled 
humbug,  in  my  ignorance !  I  shall  throttle  down  my  emo 
tions  hereafter,  about  this  sort  of  people,  until  I  have  read 
them  up  and  know  whether  they  are  entitled  to  any  tearful 
attentions  or  not.  I  wish  I  had  my  immortelles  back,  now, 
and  that  bunch  of  radishes. 

In  Paris  we  often  saw  in  shop  windows  the  sign,  "  English 
Spoken  Here"  just  as  one  sees  in  the  windows  at  home  the 
sign,  "  Id  on  park  francaise"  We  always  invaded  these  places 
at  once — and  invariably  received  the  information,  framed  in 
faultless  French,  that  the  clerk  who  did  the  English  for  the 
establishment  had  just  gone  to  dinner  and  would  be  back  in 
an  hour — would  Monsieur  buy  something?  We  wondered 
why  those  parties  happened  to  take  their  dinners  at  such 
erratic  and  extraordinary  hours,  for  we  never  calle'd  at  a  time 
when  an  exemplary  Christian  would  be  in  the  least  likely  to 
be  abroad  on  such  an  errand.  The  truth  was,  it  was  a  base 
fraud — a  snare  to  trap  the  unwary — chaff  to  catch  fledglings 
with.  They  had  no  English-murdering  clerk.  They  trusted 
to  the  sign  to  inveigle  foreigners  into  their  lairs,  and  trusted 
to  their  own  blandishments  to  keep  them  there  till  they  bought 
something. 

We  ferreted  out  another  French  imposition — a  frequent 


148 

sign  to  this  effect :  "  ALL  MANNER  OF  AMERICAN  DRINKS 
ARTISTICALLY  PREPARED  HERE."  We  procured  the  services 
of  a  gentleman  experienced  in  the  nomenclature  of  the  Amer 
ican  bar,  and  moved  upon  the  works  of  one  of  these  impos 
tors.  A  bowing,  aproned  Frenchman  skipped  forward  and 
said: 

"Que  voulez  les  messieurs?"  I  do  not  know  what  Que 
voulez  les  messieurs  means,  but  such  was  his  remark. 

Our  General  said,  "  We  will  take  a  whisky-straight." 

[A  stare  from  the  Frenchman.] 


AMERICAN   DRINKS. 


"  Well,  if  you  don't  know  what  that  is,  give  us  a  cham 
pagne  cock-tail." 

[A  stare  and  a  shrug.] 


ROYAL  HONORS  TO  A  YANKEE.        149 

"  Well,  then,  give  us  a  sherry  cobbler." 

The  Frenchman  was  checkmated.  This  was  all  Greek  to 
him. 

"  Give  us  a  brandy  smash  !" 

The  Frenchman  began  to  back  away,  suspicious  of  the 
ominous  vigor  of  the  last  order — began  to  back  away,  shrug 
ging  his  shoulders  and  spreading  his  hands  apologetically. 

The  General  followed  him  up  and  gained  a  complete  victory. 
The  uneducated  foreigner  could  not  even  furnish  a  Santa 
Cruz  Punch,  an  Eye-Opener,  a  Stone-Fence,  or  an  Earth 
quake.  It  was  plain  that  he  was  a  wicked  impostor. 

An  acquaintance  of  mine  said,  the  other  day,  that  he  was 
doubtless  the  only  American  visitor  to  the  Exposition  who  had 
had  the  high  honor  of  being  escorted  by  the  Emperor's  body 
guard.  I  said  with  unobtrusive  frankness  that  I  was  aston 
ished  that  such  a  long-legged,  lantern-jawed,  unprepossessing 
looking  spectre  as  he  should  be  singled  out  for  a  distinction 
like  that,  and  asked  how  it  came  about.  He  said  he  had  at 
tended  a  great  military  review  in  the  Champ  de  Mars,  some 
time  ago,  and  while  the  multitude  about  him  was  growing 
thicker  and  thicker  every  moment,  he  observed  an  open  space 
inside  the  railing.  He  left  his  carriage  and  went  into  it.  He 
was  the  only  person  there,  and  so  he  had  plenty  of  room,  and 
the  situation  being  central,  he  could  see  .all  the  preparations 
going  on  about  the  field.  By  and  by  there  was  a  sound  of 
music,  and  soon  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and  the  Emperor 
of  Austria,  escorted  by  the  famous  Cent  Gardes,  entered  the 
inclosure.  They  seemed  not  to  observe  him,  but  directly,  in 
response  to  a  sign  from  the  commander  of  the  Guard,  a  young 
lieutenant  came  toward  him  with  a  file  of  his  men  following, 
halted,  raised  his  hand  and  gave  the  military  salute,  and 
then  said  in  a  low  voice  that  he  was  sorry  to  have  to  disturb 
a  stranger  and  a  gentleman,  but  the  place  was  sacred  to  roy 
alty.  Then  this  New  Jersey  phantom  rose  up  and  bowed  and 
begged  pardon,  then  with  the  officer  beside  him,  the  file  of 
men  marching  behind  him,  and  with,  every  mark  of  re 
spect,  he  was  escorted  to  his  carriage,  by  the  imperial  Cent 


150 


THE     OVER-ESTIMATED     GRISETTE. 


ROYAL  HONORS  TO  A  YANKEE. 


Gardes!     The  officer  sainted  again  and  fell  back,  the  New 
Jersey  sprite  bowed  in   return    and   had  presence   of  mind 

enough  to  pretend  that  he  had 
simply  called  on  a  matter  of 
private  business  with  those  em 
perors,  and  so  waved  them  an 
adieu,  and  drove  from  the 
field! 

Imagine  a  poor  Frenchman 
ignorantly  intruding  upon  a 
public  rostrum  sacred  to  some 
six-penny  dignitary  in  America. 
The  police  would  scare  him  to 
death,  first,  with  a  storm  of 
their  elegant  blasphemy,  and 
then  pull  him  to  pieces  getting 
him  away  from  there.  We  are 
measurably  superior  to  the 

JFrench  in  some  things,  but  they  are  immeasurably  our  bet 
ters  in  others. 

Enough  of  Paris  for  the  present.  We  have  done  our  whole 
duty  by  it  We  have  seen  the  Tuileries,  the  Napoleon 
Column,  .the  Madeleine,  that  wonder  of  wonders  the  tomb  of 
Napoleon,  all  the  great  churches  and  museums,  libraries,  im 
perial  palaces,  and  sculpture  and  picture  galleries,  the  Pan 
theon,  Jardm  des  Plantes,  the  opera,  the  circus,  the  Legislative 
JBody,  the  billiard-rooms,  the  barbers,  the  grisettes — 

Ah,  the  grisettes!  I  had  almost  forgotten.  They  are  an 
other  romantic  fraud.  They  were  (if  you  let  the  books  of 
travel  tell  it,)  always  so  beautiful — so  neat  and  trim,  so  grace- 
i'uL — so  naive  and  trusting — so  gentle,  so  winning — so  faithful 
to  their  shop  duties,  so  irresistible  to  buyers  in  their  prattling 
importunity — so  devoted  to  their  poverty-stricken  students  of 
the  Latin  Quarter — so  light  hearted  and  happy  on  their  Sun 
day  picnics  in  the  suburbs — and  oh,  so  charmingly,  so  delight 
fully  immoral ! 
.Stuff!  .For  three  or  Jhur  days  I  was  constantly  saying: 


THE     OVER-ESTIMATED     GRISETTE. 


151 


"  Quick,  Ferguson  !  is  that  a  grisette?" 

And  lie  always  said  "  No." 

He  comprehended,  at  last,  that  I  wanted  to  see  a  grisette. 
Then  he  showed  me  dozens  of  them.  They  were  like  nearly 
all  the  Frenchwomen  I  ever  saw — homely.  They  had  large 
hands,  large  feet,  large  mouths ;  they  had  pug  noses  as  a  gen 
eral  thing,  and  mustaches  that  not  even  good  breeding  could 
overlook ;  they  combed  their  hair  straight  back  without  part 
ing;  they  were  ill-shaped,  they  were  not  winning,  they  were 
not  graceful ;  I  knew 
by  their  looks  that 
they  ate  garlic  and 
onions ;  and  lastly  and 
finally,  to  my  think 
ing  it  would  be  base 
flattery  to  call  them 
immoral. 

Aroint  thee,  wench ! 
I  sorrow  for  the  vaga 
bond  student  of  the 
Latin  Quarter  now, 
even  more  than  for 
merly  I  envied  him. 
Thus  topples  to  earth 
another  idol  of  my  in 
fancy. 

We  have  seen  every 
thing,  and  to-morrow 
we  go  to  Versailles. 
We  shall  see  Paris 
only  for  a  little  while 
as  we  come  back  to 

take  up  our  line  of  march  for  the  ship,  and  "so  I  may 
as  well  bid  the  beautiful  city  a  regretful  farewell.  We  shall 
travel  many  thousands  of  miles  after  we  leave  here,  and  visit 
many  great  cities,  but  we  shall  find  none  so  enchanting  as 
this. 


GRISETTE 


152  A     DELIBERATE     OPINION. 

Some  of  our  party  have  gone  to  England,  intending  to  take 
a  roundabout  course  and  rejoin  the  vessel  at  Leghorn  or 
Naples,  several  weeks  hence.  "We  came  near  going  to  Geneva, 
but  have  concluded  to  return  to  Marseilles  and  go  up  through 
Italy  from  Genoa. 

I  will  conclude  this  chapter  with  a  remark  that  I  am  sin 
cerely  proud  to  be  able  to  make — and  glad,  as  well,  that  my 
comrades  cordially  indorse  it,  to  wit :  by  far  the  handsomest 
women  we  have  seen  in  France  were  born  and  reared  in 
America. 

I  feel,  now,  like  a  man  who  has  redeemed  a  failing  reputa 
tion  and  shed  lustre  upon  a  dimmed  escutcheon,  by  a  single 
just  deed  done  at  the  eleventh  hour. 

Let  the  curtain  fall,  to  slow  music. 


CHAPTEE   XVI. 

"YTEKSAILLES!  It  is  wonderfully  beautiful !  You  gaze, 
V  and  stare,  and  try  to  understand  that  it  is  real,  that  it 
is  on  the  earth,  that  it  is  not  the  Garden  of  Eden — but  your 
brain  grows  giddy,  stupefied  by  the  world  of  beauty  around 
you,  and  you  half  believe  you  are  the  dupe  of  an  exquisite 
dream.  The  scene  thrills  one  like  military  music !  A  noble 
palace,  stretching  its  ornamented  front  block  upon  block  away, 
till  it  seemed  that  it  would  never  end;  a  grand  promenade 
before  it,  whereon  the  armies  of  an  empire  might  parade ;  all 
about  it  rainbows  of  flowers,  and  colossal  statues  that  were 
almost  numberless,  and  yet  seemed  only  scattered  over  the 
ample  space ;  broad  flights  of  stone  steps  leading  down  from 
the  promenade  to  lower  grounds  of  the  park — stairways  that 
whole  regiments  might  stand  to  arms  upon  and  have  room  to 
spare ;  vast  fountains  whose  great  bronze  effigies  discharged 
rivers  of  sparkling  water  into  the  air  and  mingled  a  hundred 
curving  jets  together  in  forms  of  matchless  beauty ;  wide  grass- 
carpeted  avenues  that  branched  hither  and  thither  in  every 
direction  and  wandered  to  seemingly  interminable  distances, 
walled  all  the  way  on  either  side  with  compact  ranks  of  leafy 
trees  whose  branches  met  above  and  formed  arches  as  faultless 
and  as  symmetrical  as  ever  were  carved  in  stone ;  and  here 
and  there  were  glimpses  of  sylvan  lakes  with  miniature  ships 
glassed  in  their  surfaces.  And  every  where — on  the  palace 
steps,  and  the  great  promenade,  around  the  fountains,  among 
the  trees,  and  far  under  the  arches  of  the  endless  avenues,  hun- 


154 


A     WONDERFUL     PARK. 


dreds  and  hundreds  of  people  in  gay  costumes  walked  or  ran 
or  danced,  and  gave  to  the  fairy  picture  the  life  and  animation 
which  was  all  of  perfection  it  could  have  lacked. 

It  was  worth  a  pilgrimage  to  see.  Every  thing  is  on  so 
gigantic  a  scale.  Nothing  is  small — nothing  is  cheap.  The 
statues  are  all  large ;  the  palace  is  grand ;  the  park  covers  a 
fair-sized  county ;  the  avenues  are  interminable.  All  the 
distances  and  all  the  dimensions  about  Versailles  are  vast.  I 


JfOUXTAIX   AT 


used  to  think  the  pictures  exaggerated  these  distances  and 
these  dimensions  beyond  all  reason,  and  that  they  made  Ver 
sailles  more  beautiful  than  it  was  possible  for  any  place  in  the 
world  to  be.  I  know  now  that  the  pictures  never  came  up  to 
the  subject  in  any  respect,  and  that  no  painter  could  represent 
Versailles  on  canvas  as  beautiful  as  it  is  in  reality.  I  used  to 
abuse  Louis  XIV.  for  spending  two  hundred  millions  of  dollars 
in  creating  this  marvelous  park,  when  bread  was  so  scarce 


A     WONDERFUL     PARK.  155 

with  some  of  his  subjects ;  but  I  have  forgiven  him  now.  He 
took  a  tract  of  land  sixty  miles  in  circumference  and  set  to 
work  to  make  this  park  and  build  this  palace  and  a  road  to  it 
from  Paris.  He  kept  36,000  men  employed  daily  on  it,  and 
the  labor  was  so  unhealthy  that  they  used  to  die  and  be  hauled 
off  by  cart-loads  every  night.  The  wife  of  a  nobleman  of  the 
time  speaks  of  this  as  an  "  inconvenience"  but  naively  remarks 
that  "  it  does  not  seem  worthy  of  attention  in  the  happy  state 
of  tranquillity  we  now  enjoy." 

I  always  thought  ill  of  people  at  home,  who  trimmed  their 
shrubbery  into  pyramids,  and  squares,  and  spires,  and  all 
manner  of  unnatural  shapes,  and  when  I  saw  the  same  thing 
being  practiced  in  this  great  park  I  began  to  feel  dissatisfied. 
But  I  soon  saw  the  idea  of  the  thing  and  the  wisdom  of  it. 
They  seek  the  general  effect.  We  distort  a  dozen  sickly  trees 
into  unaccustomed  shapes  in  a  little  yard  no  bigger  than  a 
dining-room,  and  then  surely  they  look  absurd  enough.  But 
here  they  take  two  hundred  thousand  tall  forest  trees  and  set 
them  in  a  double  row ;  allow  no  sign  of  leaf  or  branch  to  grow 
on  the  trunk  lower  down  than  six  feet  above  the  ground  ; 
from  that  point  the  boughs  begin  to  project,  and  very  grad 
ually  they  extend  outward  further  and  further  till  they  meet 
overhead,  and  a  faultless  tunnel  of  foliage  is  formed.  The  arch 
is  mathematically  precise.  The  effect  is  then  very  fine.  They 
make  trees  take  fifty  different  shapes,  and  so  these  quaint  effects 
are  infinitely  varied  and  picturesque.  The  trees  in  no  two  ave 
nues  are  shaped  alike,  and  consequently  the  eye  is  not  fatigued 
with  any  thing  in  the  nature  of  monotonous  uniformity.  I  will 
drop  this  subject  now,  leaving  it  to  others  to  determine  how 
these  people  manage  to  make  endless  ranks  of  lofty  forest 
trees  grow  to  just  a  certain  thickness  of  trunk  (say  a  foot  and 
two-thirds ;)  how  they  make  them  spring  to  precisely  the  same 
height  for  miles ;  how  they  make  them  grow  so  close  together ; 
how  they  compel  one  huge  limb  to  spring  from  the  same 
identical  spot  on  each  tree  and  form  the  main  sweep  of  the 
arch ;  and  how  all  these  things  are  kept  exactly  in  the  same 
condition,  and  in  the  same  exquisite  shapeliness  and  symmetry 


156  A     WONDERFUL     PARK. 

month  after  montli  and  year  after  year — for  I  have  tried  to 
reason  out  the  problem,  and  have  failed. 

We  walked  through  the  great  hall  of  sculpture  and  the  one 
hundred  and  fifty  galleries  of  paintings  in  the  palace  of  Ver 
sailles,  and  felt  that  to  be  in  such  a  place  was  useless  unless 
one  had  a  whole  year  at  his  disposal.  These  pictures  are  all 
battle-scenes,  and  only  one  solitary  little  canvas  among  them 
all  treats  of  anything  but  great  French  victories.  We  wan 
dered,  also,  through  the  Grand  Trianon  and  the  Petit  Trianon, 
those  monuments  of  royal  prodigality,  and  with  histories  so 
mournful — filled,  as  it  is,  with  souvenirs  of  Napoleon  the  First, 
and  three  dead  Kings  and  as  many  Queens.  In  one  sumptu 
ous  bed  they  had  all  slept  in  succession,  but  no  one  occupies  it 
now.  In  a  large  dining-room  stood  the  table  at  which  Louis 
XIY.  and  his  mistress,  Madame  Maintenon,  and  after  them 
Louis  XY.,  and  Pompadour,  had  sat  at  their  meals  naked  and 
unattended — for  the  table  stood  upon  a  trap-door,  which  de 
scended  with  it  to  regions  below  wrhen  it  was  necessary 
to  replenish  its  dishes.  In  a  room  of  the  Petit  Trianon  stood 
the  furniture,  just  as  poor  Marie  Antoinette  left  it  when  the 
mob  came  and  dragged  her  and  the  King  to  Paris,  never  to 
return.  Near  at  hand,  in  the  stables,  were  prodigious  carriages 
that  showed  no  color  but  gold — carriages  used  by  former  Kings 
of  France  on  state  occasions,  and  never  used  now  save  when  a 
kingly  head  is  to  be  crowned,  or  an  imperial  infant  christened. 
And  with  them  were  some  curious  sleighs,  whose  bodies  were 
shaped  like  lions,  swans,  tigers,  etc. — vehicles  that  had  once 
been  handsome  with  pictured  designs  and  fine  workmanship, 
but  were  dusty  and  decaying  now.  They  had  their  history. 
When  Louis  XIY.  had  finished  the  Grand  Trianon,  he  told 
Maintenon  he  had  created  a  Paradise  for  her,  and  asked  if  she 
could  think  of  any  thing  now  to  wish  for.  He  said  he  wished 
the  Trianon  to  be  perfection — nothing  less.  She  said  she 
could  think  of  but  one  thing — it  was  summer,  and  it  was 
balmy  France — yet  she  would  like  well  to  sleigh-ride  in  the 
leafy  avenues  of  Versailles !  The  next  morning  found  miles 
and  miles  of  grassy  avenues  spread  thick  with  snowy  salt  and 


PARADISE     LOST.  157 

sugar,  and  a  procession  of  those  quaint  sleighs  waiting  to 
receive  the  chief  concubine  of  the  gayest  and  most  unprinci 
pled  court  that  France  has  ever  seen  ! 

From  sumptuous  Versailles,  with  its  palaces,  its  statues,  its 
gardens  and  its  fountains,  we  journeyed  back  to  Paris  and 
sought  its  antipodes — the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine.  Little,  nar 
row  streets ;  dirty  children  blockading  them ;  greasy,  slovenly 
women  capturing  and  spanking  them ;  filthy  dens  on  first 
floors,  with  rag  stores  in  them  (the  heaviest  business  in  the 
Faubourg  is  the  chiffonier's ;)  other  filthy  dens  where  whole 
suits  of  second  and  third-hand  clothing  are  sold  at  prices  that 
would  ruin  any  proprietor  who  did  not  steal  his  stock ;  still 
other  filthy  dens  where  they  sold  groceries — sold  them  by  the 
half-pennyworth — five  dollars  would  buy  the  man  out,  good 
will  and  all.  Up  these  little  crooked  streets  they  will  murder 
a  man  for  seven  dollars  and  dump  the  body  in  the  Seine. 
And  up  some  other  of  these  streets — most  of  them,  I  should 
say — live  lorettes. 

All  through  this  Faubourg  St.  Antoine,  misery,  poverty, 
vice  and  crime  go  hand  in  hand,  and  the  evidences  of  it  stare 
one  in  the  face  from  every  side.  Here  the  people  live  who 
begin  the  revolutions.  "Whenever  there  is  any  thing  of  that 
kind  to  be  clone,  they  are  always  ready.  They  take  as  much 
genuine  pleasure  in  building  a  barricade  as  they  do  in  cutting 
a  throat  or  shoving  a  friend  into  the  Seine.  It  is  these  savage- 
looking  ruffians  who  storm  the  splendid  halls  of  the  Tuileries, 
occasionally,  and  swarm  into  Versailles  when  a  King  is  to  be 
called  to  account. 

But  they  will  build  no  more  barricades,  they  will  break  no 
more  soldiers'  heads  with  paving-stones.  Louis  Napoleon  has 
taken  care  of  all  that.  He  is  annihilating  the  crooked  streets, 
and  building  in  their  stead  noble  boulevards  as  straight  as  an 
arrow — avenues  which  a  cannon  ball  could  traverse  from  end 
to  end  without  meeting  an  obstruction  more  irresistible  than 
the  flesh  and  bones  of  men — boulevards  whose  stately  edifices 
will  never  afford  refuges  and  plotting-places  for  starving,  dis 
contented  revolution-breeders.  Five  of  these  great  thorough- 


158  NAPOLEONIC  STRATEGY. 

fares  radiate  from  one  ample  centre — a  centre  which  is  exceed 
ingly  well  adapted  to  the  accommodation  of  heavy  artillery. 
The  mobs  used  to  riot  there,  but  they  must  seek  another  rally- 
ing-place  in  future.  And  this  ingenious  Napoleon  paves  the 
streets  of  his  great  cities  with  a  smooth,  compact  composition 
of  asphaltum  and  sand.  ~No  more  barricades  of  flag-stones — 
no  more  assaulting  his  Majesty's  troops  with  cobbles.  I  can 
not  feel  friendly  toward  my  quondam  fellow- American,  Napo 
leon  III.,  especially  at  this  time,*  when  in  fancy  I  see  his 
credulous  victim,  Maximilian,  lying  stark  and  stiff  in  Mexico, 
and  his  maniac  widow  watching  eagerly  from  her  French 
asylum  for  the  form  that  will  never  come — but  I  do  admire 
his  nerve,  his  calm  self-reliance,  his  shrewd  good  sense. 

*  July,  1867. 


CHAPTEE   XVII. 

~TTT~E  had  a  pleasant  journey  of  it  seaward  again.  We 
*  V  found  that  for  the  three  past  nights  our  ship  had 
been  in  a  state  of  war.  The  first  night  the  sailors  of  a  British 
ship,  being  happy  with  grog,  came  down  on  the  pier  and  chal 
lenged  our  sailors  to  a  free  fight.  They  accepted  with  alac 
rity,  repaired  to  the  pier  and  gained — their  share  of  a  drawn 
battle.  Several  bruised  and  bloody  members  of  both  parties 
were  carried  off  by  the  police,  and  imprisoned  until  the  fol 
lowing  morning.  The  next  night  the  British  boys  came  again 
to  renew  the  fight,  but  our  men  had  had  strict  orders  to 
remain  on  board  and  out  of  sight.  They  did  so,  and  the 
besieging  party  grew  noisy,  and  more  and  more  abusive  as 
the  fact  became  apparent  (to  them,)  that  our  men  were  afraid 
to  come  out.  They  went  away,  finally,  with  a  closing  burst 
of  ridicule  and  offensive  epithets.  The  third  night  they  came 
again,  and  were  more  obstreperous  than  ever.  They  swag 
gered  up  and  down  the  almost  deserted  pier,  and  hurled  curses, 
obscenity  and  stinging  sarcasms  at  our  crew.  It  was  more 
than  human  nature  could  bear.  The  executive  officer  ordered 
our  men  ashore — with  instructions  not  to  fight.  They  charged 
the  British  and  gained  a  brilliant  victory.  I  probably  would 
not  have  mentioned  this  war  had  it  ended  differently.  But  I 
travel  to  learn,  and  I  still  remember  that  they  picture  no 
French  defeats  in  the  battle-galleries  of  Versailles. 

It  was  like  home  to  us  to  step  on  board  the  comfortable 
ship  again,  and  smoke  and  lounge  about  her  breezy  decks. 
And  yet  it  was  not  altogether  like  home,  either,  because  so 


160  "HOME   AGAIN." 

many  members  of  the  family  were  away.  We  missed  some 
pleasant  faces  which  we  would  rather  have  found  at  dinner, 
and  at  night  there  were  gaps  in  the  euchre-parties  which  could 
not  be  satisfactorily  filled.  "  Moult."  was  in  England,  Jack 
in  Switzerland,  Charley  in  Spain.  Blucher  was  gone,  none 
could  tell  where.  But  we  were  at  sea  again,  and  we  had  the 
stars  and  the  ocean  to  look  at,  and  plenty  of  room  to  meditate 
in. 

In  due  time  the  shores  of  Italy  were  sighted,  and  as  we 
stood  gazing  from  the  decks  early  in  the  bright  summer  morn 
ing,  the  stately  city  of  Genoa  rose  up  out  of  the  sea  and  flung 
back  the  sunlight  from  her  hundred  palaces. 

Here  we  rest,  for  the  present — or  rather,  here  we  have  been 
trying  to  rest,  for  some  little  time,  but  we  run  about  too  much 
to  accomplish  a  great  deal  in  that  line. 

I  would  like  to  remain  here.  I  had  rather  not  go  any 
further.  There  may  be  prettier  women  in  Europe,  but  I 
doubt  it.  The  population  of  Genoa  is  120,000 ;  two-thirds  of 
these  are  women,  I  think,  and  at  least  two-thirds  of  the 
women  are  beautiful.  They  are  as  dressy,  and  as  tasteful  and 
as  graceful  as  they  could  possibly  be  without  being  angels. 
However,  angels  are  not  very  dressy,  I  believe.  At  least  the 
angels  in  pictures  are  not — they  wear  nothing  but  wings. 
But  these  Genoese  women  do  look  so  charming.  Most  of  the 
young  demoiselles  are  robed  in  a  cloud  of  white  from  head  to 
foot,  though  many  trick  themselves  out  more  elaborately. 
Nine-tenths  of  them  wear  nothing  on  their  heads  but  a  filmy 
sort  of  veil,  which  falls  down  their  backs  like  a  white  mist. 
They  are  very  fair,  and  many  of  them  have  blue  eyes,  but 
black  and  dreamy  dark  brown  ones  are  met  with  oftenest. 

The  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  Genoa  have  a  pleasant  fashion 
of  promenading  in  a  large  park  on  the  top  of  a  hill  in  the 
centre  of  the  city,  from  six  till  nine  in  the  evening,  and  then  eat 
ing  ices  in  a  neighboring  garden  an  hour  or  two  longer.  We 
went  to  the  park  on  Sunday  evening.  Two  thousand  persons 
were  present,  chiefly  young  ladies  and  gentlemen.  The  gen 
tlemen  were  dressed  in  the  very  latest  Paris  fashions,  and  the 


THE     HOME     OF     FEMALE     BEAUTY.  161 

robes  of  the  ladies  glinted  among  the  trees  like  so  many  snow- 
flakes.  The  multitude  moved  round  and  round  the  park  in  a 
great  procession.  The  bands  played,  and  so  did  the  fountains ; 
the  moon  and  the  gas  lamps  lit  up  the  scene,  and  altogether  it 
was  a  brilliant  and  an  animated  picture.  I  scanned  every 
female  face  that  passed,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  all  were 
handsome.  I  never  saw  such  a  freshet  of  loveliness  before. 
I  do  not  see  how  a  man  of  only  ordinary  decision  of  character 


WOMEN    OF   GEXOA. 


could  marry  here,  because,  before  he  could  get  his  mind  made 
up  he  would  fall  in  love  with  somebody  else. 

Never  smoke  any  Italian  tobacco.  Never  do  it  on  any 
account.  It  makes  me  shudder  to  think  what  it  must  be  made 
of.  You  can  not  throw  an  old  cigar  "  stub  "  down  any  where, 
but  some  vagabond  will  pounce  upon  it  on  the  instant.  I 
like  to  smoke  a  good  deal,  but  it  wounds  my  sensibilities  to 
see  one  of  these  stub-hunters  watching  me  out  of  the  corners 

11 


162  AMONG     THE     PALACES. 

of  his  hungry  eyes  and  calculating  how  long  my  cigar  will  be 
likely  to  last.  It  reminded  me  too  painfully  of  that  San 
Francisco  undertaker  who  used  to  go  to  sick-beds  with  his 
watch  in  his  hand  and  time  the  corpse.  One  of  these  stub- 
hunters  followed  us  all  over  the  park  last  night,  and  we  never 
had  a  smoke  that  was  worth  any  thing.  We  were  always 
moved  to  appease  him  with  the  stub  before  the  cigar  was  half 
gone,  because  he  looked  so  viciously  anxious.  He  regarded  us 
as  his  own  legitimate  prey,  by  right  of  discovery,  I  think, 
because  he  drove  off  several  other  professionals  who  wanted 
to  take  stock  in  us. 

Now,  they  surely  must  chew  up  those  old  stubs,  and  dry 
and  sell  them  for  smoking-tobacco.  Therefore,  give  your 
custom  to  other  than  Italian  brands  of  the  article. 

"  The  Superb  "  and  the  "  City  of  Palaces  "  are  names  which 
Genoa  has  held  for  centuries.  She  is  full  of  palaces,  certainly, 
and  the  palaces  are  sumptuous  inside,  but  they  are  very  rusty 
without,  and  make  no  pretensions  to  architectural  magnifi 
cence.  "  Genoa,  the  Superb,"  would  be  a  felicitous  title  if  it 
referred  to  the  women. 

We  have  visited  several  of  the  palaces — immense  thick- 
walled  piles,  with  great  stone  staircases,  tesselated  marble 
pavements  on  the  floors,  (sometimes  they  make  a  mosaic  work, 
of  intricate  designs,  wrought  in  pebbles,  or  little  fragments  of 
marble  laid  in  cement,)  and  grand  salons  hung  with  pictures 
by  Rubens,  Guido,  Titian,  Paul  Veronese,  and  so  on,  and 
portraits  of  heads  of  the  family,  in  plumed  helmets  and  gal 
lant  coats  of  mail,  and  patrician  ladies,  in  stunning  costumes 
of  centuries  ago.  But,  of  course,  the  folks  were  all  out  in  the 
country  for  the  summer,  and  might  not  have  known  enough  to 
ask  us  to  dinner  if  they  had  been  at  home,  and  so  all  the 
grand  empty  salons,  with  their  resounding  pavements,  their 
grim  pictures  of  dead  ancestors,  and  tattered  banners  with  the 
dust  of  bygone  centuries  upon  them,  seemed  to  brood  solemnly 
of  death  and  the  grave,  and  our  spirits  ebbed  away,  and  our 
cheerfulness  passed  from  us.  We  never  went  up  to  the  elev 
enth  story.  We  always  began  to  suspect  ghosts.  There  was 


AMONG     THE     PALACES. 


163 


always  an  undertaker-looking  servant  along,  too,  who  handed 
us  a  programme,  pointed  to  the  picture  that  began  the  list  of 
the  salon  he  was  in,  and  then  stood  stiff  and  stark  and  unsmil 
ing  in  his  petrified  livery  till  we  were  ready  to  move  on 

to  the  next  chamber,  where 
upon  he  marched  sadly 
ahead  and  took  up  another 
malignantly  respectful  posi 
tion  as  before.  I  wasted  so 
much  time  praying  that  the 
roof  would  fall  in  on  these 


PETRIFIED   LACKEY. 


dispiriting  flunkeys  that  I  had  but  little  left  to  bestow  upon 
palace  and  pictures. 

And  besides,  as  in  Paris,  we  had  a  guide.  Perdition  catch 
all  the  guides.  This  one  said  he  was  the  most  gifted  linguist 
in  Genoa,  as  far  as  English  was  concerned,  and  that  only  two 
persons  in  the  city  beside  himself  could  talk  the  language  at 
all.  He  showed  us  the  birthplace  of  Christopher  Columbus, 


164 


CHURCH     MAGNIFICENCE. 


and  after  we  had  reflected  in  silent  awe  before  it  for  fifteen 
minutes,  lie  said  it  was  not  the  birthplace  of  Columbus,  but 
of  Columbus's  grandmother !  When  we  demanded  an  expla 
nation  of  his  conduct  he  only  shrugged  his  shoulders  and 
answered  in  barbarous  Italian.  I  shall  speak  further  of  this 
guide  in  a  future  chapter.  All  the  information  we  got  out  of 
him  we  shall  be  able  to  carry  along  with  us,  I  think. 

I  have  not  been  to  church  so  often  in  a  long  time  as  I  have 

in  the  last  few  weeks. 
The  people  in  these  old 
lands  seem  to  make 
churches  their  specialty. 
Especially  does  this 
seem  to  be  the  case  with 
the  citizens  of  Genoa. 
I  think  there  is  a  church 
every  three  or  four  hun 
dred  yards  all  over  town. 
The  streets  are  sprinkled 
from  end  to  end  with 
shovel-hatted,  long- 
robed,  well-fed  priests, 
and  the  church  bells  by 
dozens  are  pealing  all 
the  day  long,  nearly. 
Every  now  and  then  one 
comes  across  a  friar  of 
orders  gray,  with  shaven 

head,  long,  coarse  robe,  rope  girdle  and  beads,  and  with  feet 
cased  in  sandals  or  entirely  bare.  These  worthies  suffer  in 
the  flesh,  and  do  penance  all  their  lives,  I  suppose,  but  they  look 
like  consummate  famine-breeders.  They  are  all  fat  and  serene. 
The  old  Cathedral  of  San  Lorenzo  is  about  as  notable  a 
building  as  we  have  found  in  Genoa.  It  is  vast,  and  has 
colonnades  of  noble  pillars,  and  a  great  organ,  and  the  cus 
tomary  pomp  of  gilded  moldings,  pictures,  frescoed  ceilings,  and 
so  forth.  I  can  not  describe  it,  of  course — it  would  require  a 


PRIEST   AND    FRIAR. 


CHURCH     MAGNIFICENCE.  165 

good  many  pages  to  do  that.  But  it  is  a  curious  place.  They 
said  that  half  of  it — from  the  front  door  half  way  down  to  the 
altar — was  a  Jewish  Synagogue  before  the  Saviour  was  born, 
and  that  no  alteration  had  been  made  in  it  since  that  time. 
We  doubted  the  statement,  but  did  it  reluctantly.  We  would 
much  rather  have  believed  it.  The  place  looked  in  too  perfect 
repair  to  be  so  ancient. 

The  main  point  of  interest  about  the  Cathedral  is  the  little 
Chapel  of  St.  John  the  Baptist.  They  only  allow  \voinen  to 
enter  it  on  one  day  in  the  year,  on  account  of  the  animosity 
they  still  cherish  against  the  sex  because  of  the  murder  of  the 
Saint  to  gratify  a  caprice  of  Herodias.  In  this  Chapel  is  a 
marble  chest,  in  which,  they  told  us,  were  the  ashes  of  St. 
John ;  and  around  it  was  wound  a  chain,  which,  they  said, 
had  confined  him  wrhen  he  was  in  prison.  We  did  not  desire 
to  disbelieve  these  statements,  and  yet  we  could  not  feel  cer 
tain  that  they  wrere  correct — partly  because  we  could  have 
broken  that  chain,  and  so  could  St.  John,  and  partly  because 
we  had  seen  St.  John's  ashes  before,  in  another  Church.  We 
could  not  bring  ourselves  to  think  St.  John  had  two  sets  of 
ashes. 

They  also  showed  us  a  portrait  of  the  Madonna  which  wras 
painted  by  St.  Luke,  and  it  did  not  look  half  as  old  and 
smoky  as  some  of  the  pictures  by  Rubens.  We  could  not  help 
admiring  the  Apostle's  modesty  in  never  once  mentioning  in 
his  writings  that  he  could  paint. 

But  isn't  this  relic  matter  a  little  overdone  ?  We  find  a 
piece  of  the  true  cross  in  every  old  church  we  go  into,  and 
some  of  the  nails  that  held  it  together.  I  would  not  like  to 
be  positive,  but  I  think  we  have  seen  as  much  as  a  keg  of 
these  nails.  Then  there  is  the  crown  of  thorns;  they  have 
part  of  one  in  Sainte  Chapelle,  in  Paris,  and  part  of  one,  also, 
in  Notre  Dame.  And  as  for  bones  of  St.  Denis,  I  feel  certain 
we  have  seen  enough  of  them  to  duplicate  him,  if  necessary. 

I  only  meant  to  write  about  the  churches,  but  I  keep  wan 
dering  from  the  subject.  I  could  say  that  the  Church  of  the 
Annunciation  is  a  wilderness  of  beautiful  columns,  of  statues. 


166  HOW     THEY     LIVE. 

gilded  moldings,  and  pictures  almost  countless,  but  that 
would  give  no  one  an  entirely  perfect  idea  of  the  thing,  and 
so  where  is  the  use  ?  One  family  built  the  whole  edifice,  and 
have  got  money  left.  There  is  where  the  mystery  lies.  We 
had  an  idea  at  first  that  only  a  mint  could  have  survived  the 
expense. 

These  people  here  live  in  the  heaviest,  highest,  broadest, 
darkest,  solidest  houses  one  can  imagine.  Each  one  might 
"  laugh  a  siege  to  scorn."  A  hundred  feet  front  and  a  hun 
dred  high  is  about  the  style,  and  you  go  up  three  flights  of 
stairs  before  you  begin  to  come  upon  signs  of  occupancy. 
Every  thing  is  stone,  and  stone  of  the  heaviest — floors,  stair 
ways,  mantels,  benches — every  thing.  The  walls  are  four  to 
five  feet  thick.  The  streets  generally  are  four  or  five  to  eight 
feet  wide  and  as  crooked  as  a  corkscrew.  You  go  along  one 
of  these  gloomy  cracks,  and  look  up  and  behold  the  sky  like  a 
mere  ribbon  of  light,  far  above  your  head,  where  the  tops  of 
the  tall  houses  on  either  side  of  the  street  bend  almost 
together.  You  feel  as  if  you  were  at  the  bottom  of  some  tre 
mendous  abyss,  with  all  the  world  far  above  you.  You  wind 
in  and  out  and  here  and  there,  in  the  most  mysterious  way, 
and  have  no  more  idea  of  the  points  of  the  compass  than  if  you 
were  a  blind  man.  You  can  never  persuade  yourself  that 
these  are  actually  streets,  and  the  frowning,  dingy,  monstrous 
houses  dwellings,  till  you  see  one  of  these  beautiful,  prettily 
dressed  women  emerge  from  them — see  her  emerge  from  a 
dark,  dreary-looking  den  that  looks  dungeon  all  over,  from  the 
ground  away  half-way  up  to  heaven.  And  then  you  wonder 
that  such  a  charming  moth  could  come  from  such  a  forbidding 
shell  as  that.  The  streets  are  wisely  made  narrow  and  the 
houses  heavy  and  thick  and  stony,  in  order  that  the  people 
anay  be  cool  in  this  roasting  climate.  And  they  are  cool,  and 
stay  so.  And  while  I  think  of  it — the  men  wear  hats  and 
have  very  dark  complexions,  but  the  women  wear  no  head 
gear  but  a  flimsy  veil  like  a  gossamer's  web,  and  yet  are 
exceedingly  fair  as  a  general  thing.  Singular,  isn't  it  ? 

The  huge  palaces  of  Genoa  are  each  supposed  to  be  occupied 


MASSIVE     ARCHITECTURE.  167 

by  one  family,  but  they  could  accommodate  a  hundred,  I  should 
think.  They  are  relics  of  the  grandeur  of  Genoa's  palmy  days 
— the  days  when  she  was  a  great  commercial  and  maritime 
power  several  centuries  ago.  These  houses,  solid  marble  pal 
aces  though  they  be,  are  in  many  cases  of  a  dull  pinkish  color, 
outside,  and  from  pavement  to  eaves  are  pictured  with  Genoese 
battle-scenes,  with  monstrous  Jupiters  and  Cupids  and  with 
familiar  illustrations  from  Grecian  mythology.  Where  the 
paint  has  yielded  to  age  and  exposure  and  is  peeling  off  in 
flakes  and  patches,  the  effect  is  not  happy.  A  noseless  Cupid, 
or  a  Jupiter  with  an  eye  out,  or  a  Venus  with  a  fly -blister 
on  her  breast,  are  not  attractive  features  in  a  picture.  Some 
of  these  painted  walls  reminded  me  somewhat  of  the  tall  van, 
plastered  with  fanciful  bills  and  posters,  that  follows  the  band 
wagon  of  a  circus  about  a  country  village.  I  have  not  read  or 
heard  that  the  outsides  of  the  houses  of  any  other  European 
city  are  frescoed  in  this  way. 

I  can  not  conceive  of  such  a  thing  as  Genoa  in  ruins.  Such 
massive  arches,  such  ponderous  substructions  as  support  these 
towering  broad- winged  edifices,  we  have  seldom  seen  before ; 
and  surely  the  great  blocks  of  stone  of  which  these  edifices  are 
built  can  never  decay ;  walls  that  are  as  thick  as  an  ordinary 
American  doorway  is  high,  can  not  crumble. 

The  Republics  of  Genoa  and  Pisa  were  very  powerful  in  the 
middle  ages.  Their  ships  filled  the  Mediterranean,  and  they 
carried  on  an  extensive  commerce  with  Constantinople  and 
Syria.  Their  warehouses  were  the  great  distributing  depots 
from  whence  the  costly  merchandise  of  the  East  was  sent 
abroad  over  Europe.  They  were  warlike  little  nations,  and 
defied,  in  those  days,  governments  that  overshadow  them  now 
as  mountains  overshadow  molehills.  The  Saracens  captured 
and  pillaged  Genoa  nine  hundred  years  ago,  but  during  the 
following  century  Genoa  and  Pisa  entered  into  an  offensive 
and  defensive  alliance  and  besieged  the  Saracen  colonies  in 
Sardinia  and  the  Balearic  Isles  with  an  obstinacy  that  main 
tained  its  pristine  vigor  and  held  to  its  purpose  for  forty  long 
years.  They  were  victorious  at  last,  and  divided  their  con- 


168 


A     SCRAP     OF     ANCIENT     HISTORY. 


iron 


Genoa's    greatness 


quests  equably  among  their  great  patrician  families.  Descen 
dants  of  some  of  those  proud  families  still  inhabit  the  palaces 
of  Genoa,  and  trace  in  their  own  features  a  resemblance  to  the 
grim  knights  whose  portraits  hang  in  their  stately  halls,  and 
to  pictured  beauties  with  pouting  lips  and  merry  eyes  whose 
originals  have  been  dust  and  ashes  for  many  a  dead  and  for 
gotten  century. 

The  hotel  we  live  in  belonged  to  one  of  those  great  orders 
of  knights  of  the  Cross  in  the  times  of  the  Crusades,  and  its 
mailed  sentinels  once  kept  watch  and  ward  in  its  massive 

turrets  and  woke  the 
echoes  of  these  halls  and 
corridors  with  their 
heels. 
But 

has  degenerated  into  an 
unostentatious  commerce 
in  velvets  and  silver  fila 
gree  work.  They  say  that 
each  European  town  has 
its  specialty.  These  fila 
gree  things  are  Genoa's 
specialty.  Her  smiths  take 
silver  ingots  and  work 
them  up  into  all  manner 
of  graceful  and  beautiful 
forms.  They  make  bunch 
es  of  flowers,  from  flakes 
and  wires  of  silver,  that 
counterfeit  the  delicate  cre 
ations  the  frost  weaves 

upon  a  window  pane ;  and  we  were  shown  a  miniature  silver 
temple  whose  fluted  columns,  whose  Corinthian  capitals  and 
rich  entablatures,  whose  spire,  statues,  bells,  and  ornate  lavish- 
ness  of  sculpture  were  wrought  in  polished  silver,  and  with 
such  matchless  art  that  .every  detail  was  a  fascinating  study, 
and  the  finished  edifice  a  wonder  of  beauty. 


STATUE   OF   COLUMBUS. 


GRAVES     FOR     SIXTY     THOUSAND. 


169 


We  are  ready  to  move  again,  though  we  are  not  really  tired, 
yet,  of  the  narrow  passages  of  this  old  marble  cave.  Cave  is  a 
good  word — when  speaking  of  Genoa  under  the  stars.  When 
we  have  been  prowling  at  midnight  through  the  gloomy  crev 
ices  they  call  streets,  where  no  foot  falls  but  ours  were  echoing, 
where  only  ourselves  were  abroad,  and  lights  appeared  only  at 
long  intervals  and  at  a  distance,  and  mysteriously  disappeared 


GRAVES   OF  SIXTY   THOUSAND. 


again,  and  the  houses  at  our  elbows  seemed  to  stretch  upward 
farther  than  ever  toward  the  heavens,  the  memory  of  a  cave  I 
used  to  know  at  home  was  always  in  my  mind,  with  its  lofty 
passages,  its  silence  and  solitude,  its  shrouding  gloom,  its 
sepulchral  echoes,  its  flitting  lights,  and  more  than  all,  its 
sudden  revelations  of  branching  crevices  and  corridors  where 
we  least  expected  them. 

We  are  not  tired  of  the  endless  processions  of  cheerful,  chat 
tering  gossipers  that  throng  these  courts  and  streets  all  day 
long,  either;  nor  of  the  coarse-robed  monks;  nor  of  the  "Asti" 


170  GRAVES     FOR     SIXTY     THOUSAND. 

wines,  which  that  old  doctor  (whom  we  call  the  Oracle,)  with 
customary  felicity  in  the  matter  of  getting  every  thing  wrong, 
misterms  "  nasty."  But  we  must  go,  nevertheless. 

Our  last  sight  was  the  cemetery,  (a  burial-place  intended  to 
accommodate  60,000  bodies,)  and  we  shall  continue  to  remem 
ber  it  after  we  shall  have  forgotten  the  palaces.  It  is  a  vast 
marble  collonaded  corridor  extending  around  a  great  unoccu 
pied  square  of  ground ;  its  broad  floor  is  marble,  and  on  every 
slab  is  an  inscription — for  every  slab  covers  a  corpse.  On 
either  side,  as  one  walks  down  the  middle  of  the  passage,  are 
monuments,  tombs,  and  sculptured  figures  that  are  exquisitely 
wrought  and  are  full  of  grace  and  beauty.  They  are  new, 
and  snowy ;  every  outline  is  perfect,  every  feature  guiltless  of 
mutilation,  flaw  or  blemish ;  and  therefore,  to  us  these  far- 
reaching  ranks  of  bewitching  forms  are  a  hundred  fold  more 
lovely  than  the  damaged  and  dingy  statuary  they  have  saved 
from  the  wreck  of  ancient  art  and  set  up  in  the  galleries  of 
Paris  for  the  worship  of  the  world. 

Well  provided  with  cigars  and  other  necessaries  of  life,  we 
are  now  ready  to  take  the  cars  for  Milan. 


OHAPTEE   XVIII. 

ALL  day  long  we  sped  through  a  mountainous  country 
whose  peaks  were  bright  with  sunshine,  whose  hillsides 
were  dotted  with  pretty  villas  sitting  in  the  midst  of  gardens 
and  shrubbery,  and  whose  deep  ravines  were  cool  and  shady, 
and  looked  ever  so  inviting  from  where  we  and  the  birds  were 
winging  our  flight  through  the  sultry  upper  air. 

We  had  plenty  of  chilly  tunnels  wherein  to  check  our  per 
spiration,  though.  We  timed  one  of  them.  We  were  twenty 
minutes  passing  through  it,  going  at  the  rate  of  thirty  to 
thirty-five  miles  an  hour. 

Beyond  Alessandria  we  passed  the  battle-field  of  Marengo. 

Toward  dusk  we  drew  near  Milan,  and  caught  glimpses  of 
the  city  and  the  blue  mountain  peaks  beyond.  But  we  were 
not  caring  for  these  things — they  did  not  interest  us  in  the 
least.  We  were  in  a  fever  of  impatience ;  we  were  dying  to 
see  the  renowned  Cathedral !  We  watched — in  this  direction 
and  that — all  around — every  where.  We  needed  no  one  to 
point  it  out — we  did  not  wish  any  one  to  point  it  out — we 
would  recognize  it,  even  in  the  desert  of  the  great  Sahara. 

At  last,  a  forest  of  graceful  needles,  shimmering  in  the 
amber  sunlight,  rose  slowly  above  the  pigmy  house-tops,  as 
one  sometimes  sees,  in  the  far  horizon,  a  gilded  and  pinnacled 
mass  of  cloud  lift  itself  above  the  waste  of  waves,  at  sea, — the 
Cathedral !  We  knew  it  in  a  moment. 

Half  of  that  night,  and  all  of  the  next  day,  this  architectural 
autocrat  was  our  sole  object  of  interest. 

What  a  wonder  it  is  1     So  grand,  so  solemn,  so  vast !     And 


172  THE     GRAND     MILAN     CATHEDRAL. 

yet  so  delicate,  so  airy,  so  graceful !  A  very  world  of  solid 
weight,  and  yet  it  seems  in  the  soft  moonlight  only  a  fairy 
delusion  of  frost-work  that  might  vanish  with  a  breath  !  How 
sharply  its  pinnacled  angles  and  its  wilderness  of  spires  were 
cut  against  the  sky,  and  how  richly  their  shadows  fell  upon  its 
snowy  roof!  It  was  a  vision  ! — a  miracle! — an  anthem  sung 
in  stone,  a  poem  wrought  in  marble ! 

Howsoever  you  look  at  the  great  Cathedral,  it  is  noble,  it  is 
beautiful !  Wherever  you  stand  in  Milan,  or  within  seven 
miles  of  Milan,  it  is  visible — and  wrhen  it  is  visible,  no  other 
object  can  chain  your  whole  attention.  Leave  your  eyes 
unfettered  by  your  will  but  a  single  instant  and  they  will 
surely  turn  to  seek  it.  It  is  the  first  thing  you  look  for  when 
you  rise  in  the  morning,  and  the  last  your  lingering  gaze  rests 
upon  at  night.  Surely,  it  must  be  the  princeliest  creation  that 
ever  brain  of  man  conceived. 

At  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  wrent  and  stood  before 
this  marble  colossus.  The  central  one  of  its  five  great  doors  is 
bordered  with  a  bas-relief  of  birds  and  fruits  and  beasts  and 
insects,  which  have  been  so  ingeniously  carved  out  of  the 
marble  that  they  seem  like  living  creatures — and  the  figures 
are  so  numerous  and  the  design  so  complex,  that  one  might 
study  it  a  week  without  exhausting  its  interest.  On  the  great 
steeple — surmounting  the  myriad  of  spires — inside  of  the  spires 
— over  the  doors,  the  windows — in  nooks  and  corners — every" 
where  that  a  niche  or  a  perch  can  be  found  about  the  enor 
mous  building,  from  summit  to  base,  there  is  a  marble  statue, 
and  every  statue  is  a  study  in  itself!  Eaphael,  Angelo, 
Canova — giants  like  these  gave  birth  to  the  designs,  and  their 
own  pupils  carved  them.  Every  face  is  eloquent  with  expres 
sion,  and  every  attitude  is  full  of  grace.  Away  above,  on  the 
lofty  roof,  rank  on  rank  of  carved  and  fretted  spires  spring 
high  in  the  air,  and  through  their  rich  tracery  one  sees  the  sky 
beyond.  In  their  midst  the  central  steeple  towrers  proudly  up 
like  the  mainmast  of  some  great  Indiaman  among  a  fleet  of 
coasters. 

"We  wished  to  go  aloft.     The  sacristan  showed  us  a  marble 


ROOFS  AND  SPIKES  OF  CATIlEWtAL  AT  MILAN. 


THE     GRAND     MILAN     CATHEDRAL. 


173 


stairway  (of  course  it  was  marble,  and  of  the  purest  and  whitest 
—there  is  no  other  stone,  no  brick,  no  wood,  among  its  build- 


CENTRAL  DOOR  OF  CATHEDRAL  AT 


ing  materials,)  and  told  us  to  go  up  one  hundred  and  eighty- 
two  steps  and  stop  till  he  came.  It  was  not  necessary  to  say 
stop— we  should  have  done  that  any  how.  We  were  tired  by 
the  time  we  got  there.  This  was  the  roof.  Here,  springing 
from  its  broad  marble  flagstones,  were  the  long  files  of  spires, 
looking  very  tall  close  at  hand,  but  diminishing  in  the  dis 
tance  like  the  pipes  of  an  organ.  We  could  see,  now,  that 
the  statue  on  the  top  of  eacli  was  the  size  of  a  large  man, 
though  they  all  looked  like  dolls  from  the  street.  We  could 


174 


HIDEOUS     PERFECTION     IN     SCULPTURE. 


see,  also,  that  from  the  inside  of  each  and  every  one  of  these 
hollow  spires,  from  sixteen  to  thirty-one  beautiful  marble 
statues  looked  out  upon  the  world  below. 

From  the  eaves  to  the  comb  of  the  roof  stretched  in  endless 
succession  great  curved  marble  beams,  like  the  fore-and-aft 
braces  of  a  steamboat,  and  along  each  beam  from  end  to  end 
stood  up  a  row  of  richly  carved  flowers  and  fruits — each  sep 
arate  and  distinct  in  kind,  and  over  15,000  species  represented. 
At  a  little  distance  these  rows  seem  to  close  together  like  the 
ties  of  a  railroad  track,  and  then  the  mingling  together  of  the 


E    CATHEDRAL   AT   MILAN. 


buds  and  blossoms  of  this  marble  garden  forms  a  picture  that 
is  very  charming  to  the  eye. 

We  descended  and  entered.     Within  the  church,  long  rows 
of  fluted  columns,  like  huge  monuments,  divided  the  building 


AN     UNPLEASANT     ADVENTURE.  175 

into  broad  aisles,  and  on  the  figured  pavement  fell  many  a 
soft  blush  from  the  painted  windows  above.  I  knew  the 
church  was  very  large,  but  I  could  not  fully  appreciate  its 
great  size  until  I  noticed  that  the  men  standing  far  down  by 
the  altar  looked  like  boys,  and  seemed  to  glide,  rather  than 
walk.  We  loitered  about  gazing  aloft  at  the  monster  windows 
all  aglow  with  brilliantly  colored  scenes  in  the  lives  of  the 
Saviour  and  his  followers.  Some  of  these  pictures  are  mosaics, 
and  so  artistically  are  their  thousand  particles  of  tinted  glass 
or  stone  put  together  that  the  work  has  all  the  smoothness 
and  finish  of  a  painting.  We  counted  sixty  panes  of  glass  in 
one  window,  and  each  pane  was  adorned  with  one  of  these 
master  achievements  of  genius  and  patience. 

The  guide  showed  us  a  coffee-colored  piece  of  sculpture 
which  he  said  was  considered  to  have  come  from  the  hand  of 
Phidias,  since  it  was  not  possible  that  any  other  artist,  of  any 
epoch,  could  have  copied  nature  with  such  faultless  accuracy. 
The  figure  was  that  of  a  man  without  a  skin ;  with  every  vein, 
artery,  muscle,  every  fibre  and  tendon  and  tissue  of  the  human 
frame,  represented  in  minute  detail.  It  looked  natural,  because 
somehow  it  looked  as  if  it  were  in  pain.  A  skinned  man 
would  be  likely  to  look  that  way,  unless  his  attention  were 
occupied  with  some  other  matter.  It  was  a  hideous  thing,  and 
yet  there  was  a  fascination  about  it  some  where.  I  am  very 
sorry  I  saw  it,  because  I  shall  always  see  it,  now.  I  shall 
dream  of  it,  sometimes.  I  shall  dream  that  it  is  resting  its 
corded  arms  on  the"  bed's  head  and  looking  down  on  me  with 
its  dead  eyes ;  I  shall  dream  that  it  is  stretched  between  the 
sheets  with  me  and  touching  me  with  its  exposed  muscles  and 
its  stringy  cold  legs. 

It  is  hard  to  forget  repulsive  things.  I  remember  yet  how 
I  ran  off  from  school  once,  when  I  was  a  boy,  and  then,  pretty 
late  at  night,  concluded  to  climb  into  the  window  of  my 
father's  office  and  sleep  on  a  lounge,  because  I  had  a  delicacy 
about  going  home  and  getting  thrashed.  As  I  lay  on  the 
lounge  and  my  eyes  grew  accustomed  to  the  darkness,  I 
fancied  I  could  see  a  long,  dusky,  shapeless  thing  stretched 


176 


AN  UNPLEASANT  ADVENTURE. 


upon  the  floor.  A  cold  shiver  went  through  me.  I  turned 
my  face  to  the  wall.  That  did  not  answer.  I  was  afraid  that 
that  thing  would  creep  over  and  seize  me  in  the  dark.  I 
turned  back  and  stared  at  it  for  minutes  and  minutes — they 
seemed  hours.  It  appeared  to  me  that  the  lagging  moonlight 
never,  never  would  get  to  it.  I  turned  to  the  wall  and 
counted  twenty,  to  pass  the  feverish  time  away.  I  looked— 
the  pale  square  was  nearer.  I  turned  again  and  counted  fifty 
— it  was  almost  touching  it.  With  desperate  wrill  I  turned 
again  and  counted  one  hundred,  and  faced  about,  all  in  a 
tremble.  A  white  human  hand  lay  in  the  moonlight !  Such 


BOYHOOD   EXPERIEXCE. 


an  awful  sinking  at  the  heart — such  a  sudden  gasp  for  breath  ! 
I  felt — I  can  not  tell  ivliat  I  felt.  When  I  recovered  strength 

" 

enough,  I  faced  the  wall  again.  But  no  boy  could  have 
remained  so,  with  that  mysterious  hand  behind  him.  I 
counted  again,  and  looked — the  most  of  a  naked  arm  was 


A     GOOD     MAN.  177 

exposed.  I  put  my  hands  over  my  eyes  and  counted  till  I 
could  stand  it  no  longer,  and  then — the  pallid  face  of  a  man 
was  there,  with  the  corners  of  the  mouth  drawn  down,  and 
the  eyes  fixed  and  glassy  in  death  !  I  raised  to  a  sitting  pos 
ture  and  glowered  on  that  corpse  till  the  light  crept  down  the 
bare  breast, — line  by  line — inch  by  inch — past  the  nipple, — 
and  then  it  disclosed  a  ghastly  stab  ! 

I  went  away  from  there.  I  do  not  say  that  I  went  away  in 
any  sort  of  a  hurry,  but  I  simply  went — that  is  sufficient.  I 
went  out  at  the  window,  and  I  carried  the  sash  along  with  me. 
I  did  not  need  the  sash,  but  it  was  handier  to  take  it  than  it 
was  to  leave  it,  and  so  I  took  it. — I  was  not  scared,  but  I  was 
considerably  agitated. 

When  I  reached  home,  they  whipped  me,  but  I  enjoyed  it. 
It  seemed  perfectly  delightful.  That  man  had  been  stabbed 
near  the  office  that  afternoon,  and  they  carried  him  in  there  to 
doctor  him,  but  he  only  lived  an  hour.  I  have  slept  in  the 
same  room  with  him  often,  since  then — in  my  dreams. 

Now  we  will  descend  into  the  crypt,  under  the  grand  altar 
of  Milan  Cathedral,  and  receive  an  impressive  sermon  from 
lips  that  have  been  silent  and  hands  that  have  been  gestureless 
for  three  hundred  years. 

The  priest  stopped  in  a  small  dungeon  and  held  up  his 
candle.  This  was  the  last  resting-place  of  a  good  man,  a 
warm-hearted,  unselfish  man ;  a  man  whose  whole  life  was 
given  to  succoring  the  poor,  encouraging  the  faint-hearted, 
visiting  the  sick ;  in  relieving  distress,  whenever  and  wherever 
he  found  it.  His  heart,  his  hand  and  his  purse  were  always 
open.  With  his  story  in  one's  mind  he  can  almost  see  his 
benignant  countenance  moving  calmly  among  the  haggard 
faces  of  Milan  in  the  days  when  the  plague  swept  the  city, 
brave  where  all  others  were  cowards,  full  of  compassion  where 
pity  had  been  crushed  out  of  all  other  breasts  by  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation  gone  mad  with  terror,  cheering  all,  praying 
with  all,  helping  all,  with  hand  and  brain  and  purse,  at  a 
time  when  parents  forsook  their  children,  the  friend  deserted 

12 


178  A     SERMON     FEOM     THE     TOMB. 

the  friend,  and  the  brother  turned  away  from  the  sister  while 
her  pleadings  were  still  wailing  in  his  ears. 

This  was  good  St.  Charles  Borrome'o,  Bishop  of  Milan.  The 
people  idolized  him;  princes  lavished  uncounted  treasures 
upon  him.  We  stood  in  his  tomb.  Near  by  was  the  sarcoph 
agus,  lighted  by  the  dripping  candles.  The  walls  were  faced 
with  bas-reliefs  representing  scenes  in  his  life  done  in  massive 
silver.  The  priest  put  on  a  short  white  lace  garment  over  his 
black  robe,  crossed  himself,  bowed  reverently,  and  began  to 
turn  a  windlass  slowly.  The  sarcophagus  separated  in  two 
parts,  lengthwise,  and  the  lower  part  sank  down  and  disclosed 
a  coffin  of  rock  crystal  as  clear  as  the  atmosphere.  Within  lay 
the  body,  robed  in  costly  habiliments  covered  with  gold  em 
broidery  and  starred  with  scintillating  gems.  The  decaying 
head  was  black  with  age,  the  dry  skin  was  drawn  tight  to  the 
bones,  the  eyes  were  gone,  "there  was  a  hole  in  the  temple  and 
another  in  the  cheek,  and  the  skinny  lips  were  parted  as  in  a 
ghastly  smile !  Over  this  dreadful  face,  its  dust  and  decay, 
and  its  mocking  grin,  hung  a  crown  sown  thick  with  flashing 
brilliants ;  and  upon  the  breast  lay  crosses  and  croziers  of 
solid  gold  that  were  splendid  with  emeralds  and  diamonds. 

How  poor,  and  cheap,  and  trivial  these  gew-gaws  seemed  in 
presence  of  the  solemnity,  the  grandeur,  the  awful  majesty  of 
Death  !  Think  of  Milton,  Shakspeare,  Washington,  standing 
before  a  reverent  world  tricked  out  in  the  glass  beads,  the 
brass  ear-rings  and  tin  trumpery  of  the  savages  of  the  plains ! 

Dead  Bartolomeo  preached  his  pregnant  sermon,  and  its 
burden  was :  You  that  worship  the  vanities  of  earth — you  that 
long  for  worldly  honor,  wrorldly  wealth,  worldly  fame — behold 
their  worth ! 

To  us  it  seemed  that  so  good  a  man,  so  kind  a  heart,  so 
simple  a  nature,  deserved  rest  and  peace  in  a  grave  sacred 
from  the  intrusion  of  prying  eyes,  and  believed  that  he  him 
self  would  have  preferred  to  have  it  so,  but  perad venture  our 
wisdom  was  at  fault  in  this  regard. 

As  we  came  out  upon  the  floor  of  the  church  again,  another 
priest  volunteered  to  show  us  the  treasures  of  the  church. 


ALADDIN'S    TREASURE-HOUSE. 


179 


What,  more  ?  The  furniture  of  the  narrow  chamber  of  death 
we  had  just  visited,  weighed  six  millions  of  francs  in  ounces 
and  carats  alone,  without  a  penny  thrown  into  the  account  for 
the  costly  workmanship  bestowed  upon  them !  But  we  fol 
lowed  into  a  large  room  filled  with  tall  wooden  presses  like 
wardrobes.  He  threw  them  open,  and  behold,  the  cargoes  of 
"  crude  bullion  "  of  the  assay  offices  of  Nevada  faded  out  of 
my  memory.  There  were  Virgins  and  bishops  there,  above 
their  natural  size,  made  of  solid  silver,  each  worth,  by  weight, 


TREASURES  OF  THE  CATHEDRAL. 


from  eight  hundred  thousand  to  two  millions  of  francs,  and 
bearing  gemmed  books  in  their  hands  worth  eighty  thousand ; 
there  were  bas-reliefs  that  weighed  six  hundred  pounds,  carved 
in  solid  silver ;  croziers  and  crosses,  and  candlesticks  six  and 
eight  feet  high,  all  of  virgin  gold,  and  brilliant  with  precious 
stones ;  and  beside  these  were  all  manner  of  cups  and  vases, 
and  such  things,  rich  in  proportion.  It  was  an  Aladdin's 


180  COST     OF   CATHEDRAL. 

palace.  The  treasures  here,  by  simple  weight,  without  count 
ing  workmanship,  were  valued  at  fifty  millions  of  francs !  If 
I  could  get  the  custody  of  them  for  a  while,  I  fear  me  the  mar 
ket  price  of  silver  bishops  would  advance  shortly,  on  account 
of  their  exceeding  scarcity  in  the  Cathedral  of  Milan. 

The  priests  showed  us  two  of  St.  Paul's  fingers,  and  one  of 
St.  Peter's  ;  a  bone  of  Judas  Iscariot,  (it  was  black.)  and  also 
bones  of  all  the  other  disciples ;  a  handkerchief  in  which  the 
Saviour  had  left  the  impression  of  his  face.  Among  the  most 
precious  of  the  relics  were  a  stone  from  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
part  of  the  crown  of  thorns,  (they  have  a  whole  one  at  Notre 
Dame,)  a  fragment  of  the  purple  robe  worn  by  the  Saviour,  a 
nail  from  the  Cross,  and  a  picture  of  the  Virgin  and  Child 
painted  by  the  veritable  hand  of  St.  Luke.  This  is  the  second 
of  St.  Luke's  Yirgins  we  have  seen.  Once  a  year  all  these 
holy  relics  are  carried  in  procession  through  the  streets  of 
Milan. 

I  like  to  revel  in  the  dryest  details  of  the  great  cathedral. 
The  building  is  five  hundred  feet  long  by  one  hundred  and 
eighty  wide,  and  the  principal  steeple  is  in  the  neighborhood 
of  four  hundred  feet  high.  It  has  7,148  marble  statues,  and 
will  have  upwards  of  three  thousand  more  when  it  is  finished. 
In  addition,  it  has  one  thousand  five  hundred  bas-reliefs.  It 
has  one  hundred  and  thirty-six  spires — twenty-one  more  are  to 
be  added.  Each  spire  is  surmounted  by  a  statue  six  and  a 
half  feet  high.  Every  thing  about  the  church  is  marble,  and 
all  from  the  same  quarry ;  it  was  bequeathed  to  the  Archbish 
opric  for  this  purpose  centuries  ago.  So  nothing  but  the 
mere  workmanship  costs ;  still  that  is  expensive — the  bill  foots 
up  six  hundred  and  eighty-four  millions  of  francs,  thus  far 
(considerably  over  a  hundred  millions  of  dollars,)  and  it  is 
estimated  that  it  will  take  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  yet 
to  finish  the  cathedral.  It  looks  complete,  but  is  far  from 
being  so.  We  saw  a  new  statue  put  in  its  niche  yesterday, 
alongside  of  one  which  had  been  standing  these  four  hundred 
years,  they  said.  There  are  four  staircases  leading  up  to  the 
main  steeple,  each  of  which  cost  a  hundred  thousand  dollars, 


FATE     OF     THE     ARCHITECT. 


181 


with  the  four  hundred  and  eight  statues  which  adorn  them. 
Marco  Compioni  was  the  architect  who  designed  the  wonderful 
structure  more  than  five  hundred  years  ago,  and  it  took  him 
forty-six  years  to  work  out  the  plan  and  get  it  ready  to  hand 


CATHEUttlAL    AT    iilLAN. 


over  to  the  builders.  He  is  dead  now.  The  building  was 
begun  a  little  less  than  five  hundred  years  ago,  and  the  third 
generation  hence  will  not  see  it  completed. 

The  building  looks  best  by  moonlight,  because  the  older 
portions  of  it  being  stained  with   age,  contrast  unpleasantly 


182  ADIEU. 

with  the  newer  and  whiter  portions.  It  seems  somewhat  too 
broad  for  its  height,  but  may  be  familiarity  with  it  might  dissi 
pate  this  impression. 

They  say  that  the  Cathedral  of  Milan  is  second  only  to  St. 
Peter's  at  Rome.  I  can  not  understand  how  it  can  be  second 
to  any  thing  made  by  human  hands. 

We  bid  it  good-bye,  now — possibly  for  all  time.  How  surely, 
in  some  future  day,  when  the  memory  of  it  shall  have  lost  its 
vividness,  shall  we  half  believe  we  have  seen  it  in  a  wonderful 
dream,  but  never  with  waking  eyes ! 


CHAPTEE  XIX. 

HTA  0  you  wis  zo  liaut  can  be  ?" 

-L^  That  was  what  the  guide  asked,  when  we  were  look 
ing  up  at  the  bronze  horses  on  the  Arch  of  Peace.  It  meant, 
do  you  wish  to  go  up  there  ?  I  give  it  as  a  specimen  of  guide- 
English.  These  are  the  people  that  make  life  a  burthen  to  the 
tourist.  Their  tongues  are  never  still.  They  talk  forever  and 
forever,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  billingsgate  they  use.  Inspi 
ration  itself  could  hardly  comprehend  them.  If  they  would 
only  show  you  a  masterpiece  of  art,  or  a  venerable  tomb,  or  a 
prison-house,  or  a  battle-field,  hallowed  by  touching  memories 
or  historical  reminiscences,  or  grand  traditions,  and  then  step 
aside  and  hold  still  for  ten  minutes  and  let  you  think,  it  would 
not  be  so  bad.  But  they  interrupt  every  dream,  every  pleas 
ant  train  of  thought,  with  their  tiresome  cackling.  Some 
times  when  I  have  been  standing  before  some  cherished  old 
idol  of  mine  that  I  remembered  years  and  years  ago  in  pic 
tures  in  the  geography  at  school,  I  have  thought  I  would  give 
a  whole  world  if  the  human  parrot  at  my  side  would  suddenly 
perish  where  he  stood  and  leave  me  to  gaze,  and  ponder,  and 
worship. 

No,  we  did  not  "  wis  zo  haut  can  be."  "We  wished  to  go  to 
La  Scala,  the  largest  theatre  in  the  world,  I  think  they  call  it. 
We  did  so.  It  was  a  large  place.  Seven  separate  and  distinct 
masses  of  humanity — six  great  circles  and  a  monster  parquette. 

We  wished  to  go  to  the  Ambrosian  Library,  and  we  did  that 
also.  We  saw  a  manuscript  of  Yirgil,  with  annotations  in  the 
handwriting  of  Petrarch,  the  gentleman  who  loved  another 


184  DEFENSE     OF     ''ME.     LAURA." 

man's  Laura,  and  lavished  upon  her  all  through  life  a  love 
which  was  a  clear  waste  of  the  raw  material.  It  was  sound 
sentiment,  but  bad  judgment.  It  brought  both  parties  fame, 


LA    bO.-iLA    TllliATlili. 


and  created  a  fountain  of  commiseration  for  them  in  senti 
mental  breasts  that  is  running  yet.  But  who  says  a  word  in 
behalf  of  poor  Mr.  Laura  ?  (I  do  not  know  his  other  name.) 
Who  glorifies  him  ?  Who  bedews  him  with  tears  ?  Who 
writes  poetry  about  him  ?  Nobody.  How  do  you  suppose  he 
liked  the  state  of  things  that  has  given  the  world  so  much 
pleasure  ?  How  did  he  enjoy  having  another  man  following 
his  wife  every  where  and  making  her  name  a  familiar  word  in 
every  garlic-exterminating  mouth  in  Italy  with  his  sonnets  to 
her  pre-empted  eyebrows  ?  They  got  fame  and  sympathy — he 
got  neither.  This  is  a  peculiarly  felicitous  instance  of  what  is 
called  poetical  justice.  It  is  all  very  fine;  but  it  does  not 
chime  with  my  notions  of  right.  It  is  too  one-sided — too  un- 


LUCREZIA     BORGIA.  185 

generous.  Let  the  world  go  on  fretting  about  Laura  and 
Petrarch  if  it  will ;  but  as  for  me,  my  tears  and  my  lamenta 
tions  shall  be  lavished  upon  the  unsung  defendant. 

We  saw  also  an  autograph  letter  of  Lucrezia  Borgia,  a  lady 
for  whom  I  have  always  entertained  the  highest  respect,  on 
account  of  her  rare  histrionic  capabilities,  her  opulence  in  solid 
gold  goblets  made  of  gilded  wood,  her  high  distinction  as  an 
operatic  screamer,  and  the  facility  with,  which  she  could  order 
a  sextuple  funeral  and  get  the  corpses  ready  for  it.  We  saw 
one  single  coarse  yellow  hair  from  Lucrezia's  head,  likewise. 
It  awoke  emotions,  but  we  still  live.  In  this  same  library  we 
saw  some  drawings  by  Michael  Angelo  (these  Italians  call  him 
Mickel  Angelo,)  and  Leonardo  da  Yinci.  (They  spell  it  Yinci 
and  pronounce  it  Yinchy  ;  foreigners  always  spell  better  than 
they  pronounce.)  We  reserve  our  opinion  of  these  sketches. 

In  another  building  they  showed  us  a  fresco  representing  some 
lions  and  other  beasts  drawing  chariots ;  and  they  seemed  to 
project  so  far  from  the  wall  that  we  took  them  to  be  sculp 
tures.  The  artist  had  shrewdly  heightened  the  delusion  by 
painting  dust  on  the  creatures'  backs,  as  if  it  had  fallen  there 
naturally  and  properly.  Smart  fellow — if  it  be  smart  to 
deceive  strangers. 

Elsewhere  we  saw  a  huge  Roman  amphitheatre,  with  its 
stone  seats  still  in  good  preservation.  Modernized,  it  is  now 
the  scene  of  more  peaceful  recreations  than  the  exhibition  of  a 
party  of  wild  beasts  with  Christians  for  dinner.  Part  of  the 
time,  the  Milanese  use  it  for  a  race  track,  and  at  other  seasons 
they  flood  it  with  water  and  have  spirited  yachting  regattas 
there.  The  guide  told  us  these  things,  and  he  would  hardly 
try  so  hazardous  an  experiment  as  the  telling  of  a  falsehood, 
when  it  is  all  he  can  do  to  speak  the  truth  in  English  without 
getting  the  lock-jaw. 

In  another  place  we  were  shown  a  sort  of  summer  arbor,  with 
a  fence  before  it.  We  said  that  was  nothing.  We  looked 
again,  and  saw,  through  the  arbor,  an  endless  stretch  of  gar 
den,  and  shrubbery,  and  grassy  lawn.  We  were  perfectly  wil 
ling  to  go  in  there  and  rest,  but  it  could  not  be  done.  It  was 


186  DISTRESSING     BILLIARDS. 

only  another  delusion — a  pain  ting,  by  some  ingenious  artist 
with  little  charity  in  his  heart  for  tired  folk.  The  deception 
was  perfect.  No  one  could  have  imagined  the  park  was  not 
real.  We  even  thought  we  smelled  the  flowers  at  first. 

We  got  a  carriage  at  twilight  and  drove  in  the  shaded  ave 
nues  with  the  other  nobility,  and  after  dinner  we  took  wine 
and  ices  in  a  fine  garden  with  the  great  public.  The  music 
was  excellent,  the  flowers  and  shrubbery  were  pleasant  to  the 
eye,  the  scene  was  vivacious,  every  body  was  genteel  and  well- 
behaved,  and  the  ladies  were  slightly  moustached,  and  hand 
somely  dressed,  but  very  homely. 

We  adjourned  to  a  cafe"  and  played  billiards  an  hour,  and  I 
made  six  or  seven  points  by  the  doctor  pocketing  his  ball,  and 
he  made  as  many  by  my  pocketing  my  ball.  We  came  near 
making  a  carom  sometimes,  but  not  the  one  we  were  trying  to 
make.  The  table  was  of  the  usual  European  style — cushions 
dead  and  twice  as  high  as  the  balls ;  the  cues  in  bad  repair. 
The  natives  play  only  a  sort  of  pool  on  them.  We  have  never 
seen  any  body  playing  the  French  three-ball  game  yet,  and  I 
doubt  if  there  is  any  such  game  known  in  France,  or  that  there 
lives  any  man  mad  enough  to  try  to  play  it  on  one  of  these 
European  tables.  We  had  to  stop  playing,  finally,  because 
Dan  got  to  sleeping  fifteen  minutes  between  the  counts  and 
paying  no  attention  to  his  marking. 

Afterward  we  walked  up  and  down  one  of  the  most  popular 
streets  for  some  time,  enjoying  other  people's  comfort  and 
wishing  we  could  export  some  of  it  to  our  restless,  driving, 
vitality-consuming  marts  at  home.  Just  in  this  one  matter 
lies  the  main  charm  of  life  in  Europe — comfort.  In  America, 
we  hurry — which  is  well ;  but  when  the  day's  work  is  done, 
we  go  on  thinking  of  losses  and  gains,  we  plan  for  the  morrow, 
we  even  carry  our  business  cares  to  bed  with  us,  and  toss  and 
wrorry  over  them  when  we  ought  to  be  restoring  our  racked 
bodies  and  brains  with  sleep.  We  burn  up  our  energies  with 
these  excitements,  and  either  die  early  or  drop  into  a  lean  and 
mean  old  age  at  a  time  of  life  which  they  call  a  man's  prime 
in  Europe.  When  an  acre  of  ground  has  produced  long  and 


THE     CHARM     OF    EUROPEAN     LIFE.  187 

well,  we  let  it  lie  fallow  and  rest  for  a  season ;  we  take  no  man 
clear  across  the  continent  in  the  same  coach  he  started  in — the 
coach  is  stabled  somewhere  on  the  plains  and  its  heated  ma 
chinery  allowed  to  cool  for  a  few  days ;  when  a  razor  has  seen 
long  service  and  refuses  to  hold  an  edge,  the  barber  lays  it 
away  for  a  few  weeks,  and  the  edge  comes  back  of  its  own 
accord.  We  bestow  thoughtful  care  upon  inanimate  objects, 
but  none  upon  ourselves.  What  a  robust  people,  what  a  na 
tion  of  thinkers  we  might  be,  if  we  would  only  lay  ourselves 
on  the  shelf  occasionally  and  renew  our  edges  ! 

I  do  envy  these  Europeans  the  comfort  they  take.  When 
the  work  of  the  day  is  done,  they  forget  it.  Some  of  them  go, 
with  wife  and  children,  to  a  beer  hall,  and  sit  quietly  and  gen 
teelly  drinking  a  mug  or  two  of  ale  and  listening  to  music ; 
others  walk  the  streets,  others  drive  in  the  avenues ;  others 
assemble  in  the  great  ornamental  squares  in  the  early  evening 
to  enjoy  the  sight  and  the  fragrance  of  flowers  and  to  hear  the 
military  bands  play — no  European  city  being  without  its  fine 
military  music  at  eventide ;  and  yet  others  of  the  populace  sit 
in  the  open  air  in  front  of  the  refreshment  houses  and  eat  ices 
and  drink  mild  beverages  that  could  not  harm  a  child.  They 
go  to  bed  moderately  early,  and  sleep  well.  They  are  always 
quiet,  always  orderly,  always  cheerful,  comfortable,  and  appre 
ciative  of  life  and  its  manifold  blessings.  One  never  sees  a 
drunken  man  among  them.  The  change  that  has  come  over 
our  little  party  is  surprising.  Day  by  day  we  lose  some  of  our 
restlessness  and  absorb  some  of  the  spirit  of  quietude  and  ease 
that  is  in  the  tranquil  atmosphere  about  us  and  in  the  de 
meanor  of  the  people.  We  grow  wise  apace.  We  begin  to 
comprehend  what  life  is  for. 

We  have  had  a  bath  in  Milan,  in  a  public  bath-house.  They 
were  going  to  put  all  three  of  us  in  one  bath-tub,  but  we  ob 
jected.  Each  of  us  had  an  Italian  farm  on  his  back.  We 
could  have  felt  affluent  if  we  had  been  officially  surveyed  and 
fenced  in.  We  chose  to  have  three  bath-tubs,  and  large  ones 
—tubs  suited  to  the  dignity  of  aristocrats  who  had  real  estate, 
and  brought  it  with  them.  After  we  were  stripped  and  had 


188  "BEWARE,    WOMAN!" 

taken  the  first  chilly  dash,  we  discovered  that  haunting  atrocity 
that  has  embittered  our  lives  in  so  many  cities  and  villages  of 
Italy  and  France — there  was  no  soap.  I  called.  A  woman 
answered,  and  I  barely  had  time  to  throw  myself  against  the 
door — she  would  have  been  in,  in  another  second.  I  said : 

"  Beware,  woman !  Go  away  from  here — go  away,  now,  or 
it  will  be  the  worse  for  you.  I  am  an  unprotected  male,  but  I 
will  preserve  my  honor  at  the  peril  of  my  life !" 

These  words  must  have  frightened  her,  for  she  skurried  away 
very  fast. 

Dan's  voice  rose  on  the  air  : 

"  Oh,  bring  some  soap,  why  don't  you!" 

The  reply  was  Italian.     Dan  resumed: 

"  Soap,  you  know — soap.  That  is  what  I  want — soap. 
S-o-a-p,'soap;  s-o-p-e,  soap  ;  s-o-u-p,  soap.  Hurry  up  !  I  don't 
know  how  you  Irish  spell  it,  but  I  want  it.  Spell  it  to  suit 
yourself,  but  fetch  it.  I'm  freezing." 

I  heard  the  doctor  say,  impressively  : 

"  Dan,  how  often  have  we  told  you  that  these  foreigners  can 
not  understand  English  ?  Why  will  you  not  depend  upon  us  ? 
Why  will  you  not  tell  us  what  you  want,  and  let  us  ask  for  it 
in  the  language  of  the  country?  It  would  save  us  a  great  deal 
of  the  humiliation  your  reprehensible  ignorance  causes  us.  I 
will  address  this  person  in  his  mother  tongue :  4  Here,  cospetto  ! 
corpo  di  Bacco!  Sacramento  !  Solferino! — Soap,  you  son  of  a 
gun  !'  Dan,  if  you  would  let  us  talk  for  you,  you  would  never 
expose  your  ignorant  vulgarity." 

Even  this  fluent  discharge  of  Italian  did  not  bring  the  so.ap 
at  once,  but  there  was  a  good  reason  for  it.  There  was  not 
such  an  article  about  the  establishment.  It  is  my  belief  that 
there  never  had  been.  They  had  to  send  far  up  town,  and  to 
several  different  places  before  they  finally  got  it,  so  they  said. 
We  had  to  wait  twenty  or  thirty  minutes.  The  same  thing 
had  occurred  the  evening  before,  at  the  hotel.  I  think  I  have 
divined  the  reason  for  this  state  of  things  at  last.  The  Eng 
lish  know  how  to  travel  comfortably,  and  they  carry  soap  with 
them ;  other  foreigners  do  not  use  the  article. 


189 

At  every  hotel  we  stop  at  we  always  have  to  send  out  for 
soap,  at  the  last  moment,  when  we  are  grooming  ourselves  for 
dinner,  and  they  put  it  in  the  bill  along  with  the  candles  and 
other  nonsense.  In  Marseilles  they  make  half  the  fancy  toilet 
soap  we  consume  in  America,  but  the  Marseillaise  only  have  a 
vague  theoretical  idea  of  its  use,  which  they  have  obtained 
from  books  of  travel,  just  as  they  have  acquired  an  uncertain 
notion  of  clean  shirts,  and  the  peculiarities  of  the  gorilla,  and 
other  curious  matters.  This  reminds  me  of  poor  Blucher's 
note  to  the  landlord  in  Paris : 

"  PARIS,  le  7  Juillet 

"  Monsieur  le  Landlord — Sir :  Pourquoi  don't  you  mettez  some  savon  in  your  bed 
chambers  ?  Est-ce  que  vous  pensez  I  will  steal  it  ?  La  nuit  passee  you  charged  me 
pour  deux  chandtlles  when  I  only  had  one ;  hier  vous  avez  charged  me  avec  glace 
when  I  had  none  at  all ;  tout  les  jours  you  are  coming  some  fresh  game  or  other  on 
me,  mais  vous  ne  pouvez  pas  play  this  savon  dodge  on  me  twice.  Savon  is  a  neces 
sary  de  la  vie  to  any  body  but  a  Frenchman,  et  je  laurai  hors  de  cet  hotel  or  make 
trouble.  You  hear  me,  Allons. 

BLUCHER." 

I  remonstrated  against  the  sending  of  this  note,  because  it 
was  so  mixed  up  that  the  landlord  would  never  be  able  to 
make  head  or  tail  of  it ;  but  Blucher  said  he  guessed  the  old 
man  could  read  the  French  of  it  and  average  the  rest. 

Blucher's  French  is  bad  enough,  but  it  is  not  much  worse 
than  the  English  one  finds  in  advertisements  all  over  Italy 
every  day.  For  instance,  observe  the  printed  card  of  the  hotel 
we  shall  probably  stop  at  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Como  : 


"NOTISH." 

"  This  hotel  which  the  best  it  is  in  Italy  and  most  superb, 
is  handsome  locate  on  the  best  situation  of  the  lake,  with 
the  most  splendid  view  near  the  Villas  Melzy,  to  the  King 
of  Belgian,  and  Serbelloni.  This  hotel  have  recently  en 
large,  do  offer  all  commodities  on  moderate  price,  at  the 
strangers  gentlemen  who  whish  spend  the  seasons  on  the 
Lake  Come." 


How  is  that,  for  a  specimen  ?  In  the  hotel  is  a  handsome 
little  chapel  where  an  English  clergyman  is  employed  to  preach 
to  such  of  the  guests  of  the  house  as  hail  from  England  and 


190  AN     ILLUSTRIOUS     PAINTING. 

America,  and  this  fact  is  also  set  forth  in  barbarous  English  in 
the  same  advertisement.  Wouldn't  you  have  supposed  that  the 
adventurous  linguist  who  framed  the  card  would  have  known 
enough  to  submit  it  to  that  clergyman  before  he  sent  it  to  the 
printer  ? 

Here,  in  Milan,  in  an  ancient  tumble-down  ruin  of  a  church, 
is  the  mournful  wreck  of  the  most  celebrated  painting  in  the 
world — "  The  Last  Supper,"  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  We  are 
not  infallible  judges  of  pictures,  but  of  course  we  went  there 
to  see  this  wonderful  painting,  once  so  beautiful,  always  so  wor 
shipped  by  masters  in  art,  and  forever  to  be  famous  in  song 
and  story.  And  the  first  thing  that  occurred  was  the  infliction 
on  us  of  a  placard  fairly  reeking  with  wretched  English.  Take 
a  morsel  of  it : 

"  Bartholomew  (that  is  the  first  figure  on  the  left  hand  side  at  the  spectator,)  un 
certain  and  doubtful  about  what  he  thinks  to  have  heard,  and  upon  which  he  wants 
to  be  assured  by  himself  at  Christ  and  by  no  others." 

Good,  isn't  it  ?  And  then  Peter  is  described  as  "  argument- 
ing  in  a  threatening  and  angrily  condition  at  Judas  Iscariot." 

This  paragraph  recalls  the  picture.  "  The  Last  Supper  "  is 
painted  on  the  dilapidated  wall  of  what  was  a  little  chapel 
attached  to  the  main  church  in  ancient  times,  I  suppose.  It  is 
battered  and  scarred  in  every  direction,  and  stained  and  discol 
ored  by  time,  and  Napoleon's  horses  kicked  the  legs  off  most 
the  disciples  when  they  (the  horses,  not  the  disciples,)  were  sta 
bled  there  more  than  half  a  century  ago. 

I  recognized  the  old  picture  in  a  moment — the  Saviour  with 
bowed  head  seated  at  the  centre  of  a  long,  rough  table  with 
scattering  fruits  and  dishes  upon  it,  and  six  disciples  on  either 
side  in  their  long  robes,  talking  to  each  other — the  picture  from 
which  all  engravings  and  all  copies  have  been  made  for  three 
centuries.  Perhaps  no  living  man  has  ever  known  an  attempt  to 
paint  the  Lord's  Supper  differently.  The  world  seems  to  have 
become  settled  in  the  belief,  long  ago,  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
human  genius  to  outdo  this  creation  of  Da  Vinci's.  I  suppose 
painters  will  go  on  copying  it  as  long  as  any  of  the  original  is 


OLD     MASTERS. 


191 


left  visible  to  the  eye.  There  were  a  dozen  easels  in  the  room, 
and  as  many  artists  transferring  the  great  picture  to  their  can 
vases.  Fifty  proofs  of  steel  engravings  and  lithographs  were 
scattered  around,  too.  And  as  usual,  I  could  not  help  noticing 
how  superior  the  copies  were  to  the  original,  that  is,  to  my  in 
experienced  eye.  Wherever  you  find  a  Raphael,  a  Rubens,  a 
Michael  Angelo,  a  Caracci,  or  a  Da  Yinci  (and  we  see  them 
every  day,)  you  find  artists  copying  them,  and  the  copies  are 
always  the  handsomest.  May  be  the  originals  were  handsome 
when  they  were  new,  but  they  are  not  now. 


This    picture   is    about 
thirty  feet  long,  and  ten 
or  twelve  high,  I  should 
think,  and  the  figures  are 
at  least  life  size.     It  is  one  of  the  largest  paintings  in  Europe. 
The  colors  are  dimmed  with  age ;  the  countenances  are  scaled 


192  AMATEUR     RAPTURES. 

and  marred,  and  nearly  all  expression  is  gone  from  them; 
the  hair  is  a  dead  blur  upon  the  wall,  and  there  is  no  life  in  the 
eyes.  Only  the  attitudes  are  certain. 

People  come  here  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  glorify 
this  masterpiece.  They  stand  entranced  before  it  with  bated 
breath  and  parted  lips,  and  when  they  speak,  it  is  only  in  the 
catchy  ejaculations  of  rapture : 

"  O,  wonderful !" 

"  Such  expression !" 

"  Such  grace  of  attitude  !" 

"  Such  dignity !" 

"  Such  faultless  drawing  !" 

"  Such  matchless  coloring !" 

"  Such  feeling !" 

"  What  delicacy  of  touch  !" 

"  What  sublimity  of  conception  !" 

"  A  vision  !    a  vision !" 

I  only  envy  these  people  ;  I  envy  them  their  honest  admi 
ration,  if  it  be  honest — their  delight,  if  they  feel  delight.  I 
harbor  no  animosity  toward  any  of  them.  But  at  the  same 
time  the  thought  will  intrude  itself  upon  me,  How  can  they 
see  what  is  not  visible  ?  What  would  you  think  of  a  man  who 
looked  at  some  decayed,  blind,  toothless,  pock-marked  Cleo 
patra,  and  said :  "  What  matchless  beauty  !  What  soul !  What 
expression !"  What  would  you  think  of  a  man  who  gazed 
upon  a  dingy,  foggy  sunset,  and  said :  "  What  sublimity !  what 
feeling !  what  richness  of  coloring !"  What  would  you  think 
of  a  man  who  stared  in  ecstacy  upon  a  desert  of  stumps  and 
said  :  "  Oh,  my  soul,  my  beating  heart,  what  a  noble  forest  is 
here  1" 

You  would  think  that  those  men  had  an  astonishing  talent 
for  seeing  things  that  had  already  passed  away.  It  was  wrhat 
I  thought  when  I  stood  before  the  Last  Supper  and  heard  men 
apostrophizing  wonders,  and  beauties  and  perfections  which  had 
faded  out  of  the  picture  and  gone,  a  hundred  years  before  they 
were  born.  We  can  imagine  the  beauty  that  was  once  in  an 
aged  face ;  we  can  imagine  the  forest  if  we  see  the  stumps ; 


UNINSPIRED     CRITICS.  193 

but  we  can  not  absolutely  see  these  things  when  they  are  not 
there.  I  am  willing  to  believe  that  the  eye  of  the  practiced 
artist  can  rest  upon  the  Last  Supper  and  renew  a  lustre  where 
only  a  hint  of  it  is  left,  supply  a  tint  that  has  faded  away,  re 
store  an  expression  that  is  gone;  patch,  and  color,  and  add,  to 
the  dull  canvas  until  at  last  its  figures  shall  stand  before  him 
aglow  with  the  life,  the  feeling,  the  freshness,  yea,  with  all 
the  noble  beauty  that  was  theirs  when  first  they  came  from  the 
hand  of  the  master.  But  /  can  not  work  this  miracle.  Can 
those  other  uninspired  visitors  do  it,  or  do  they  only  happily 
imagine  they  do  ? 

After  reading  so  much  about  it,  I  am  satisfied  that  the  Last 
Supper  was  a  very  miracle  of  art  once.  But  it  was  three  hun 
dred  years  ago. 

It  vexes  me  to  hear  people  talk  so  glibly  of  "  feeling,"  "ex 
pression,"  "  tone,"  and  those  other  easily  acquired  and  inex 
pensive  technicalities  of  art  that  make  such  a  fine  show  in 
conversations  concerning  pictures.  There  is  not  one  man  in 
seventy-five  hundred  that  can  tell  what  a  pictured  face  is  in 
tended  to  express.  There  is  not  one  man  in  five  hundred  that 
can  go  into  a  court-room  and  be  sure  that  he  wrill  not  mistake 
some  harmless  innocent  of  a  juryman  for  the  black-hearted 
assassin  on  trial.  Yet  such  people  talk  of  "  character  "  and 
presume  to  interpret  "  expression  "  in  pictures.  There  is  an 
old  story  that  Matthews,  the  actor,  was  once  lauding  the  abil 
ity  of  the  human  face  to  express  the  passions  and  emotions 
hidden  in  the  breast.  He  said  the  countenance  could  disclose 
what  was  passing  in  the  heart  plainer  than  the  tongue  could. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  "  observe  my  face — what  does  it  express  ?" 

"Despair!" 

"  Bah,  it  expresses  peaceful  resignation !  "What  does  this 
express  ?" 

"  Rage !" 

"  Stuff !  it  means  terror  !     This  /" 

"  Imbecility !" 

"  Fool !  It  is  smothered  ferocity  !     Now  this  /" 

"Joy!" 

13 


194 


PAINTING     OF     THE     VIRGIN     MARY. 


"  Oh,  perdition  !     Any  ass  can  see  it  means  insanity  !" 

Expression !     People  coolly  pretend  to  read  it  who  would 

think  themselves  presumptuous  if  they  pretended  to  interpret 

the  hieroglyphics  on  the  obelisks  of  Luxor — yet  they  are  fully 

as  competent  to  do  the  one  thing  as  the  other.     I  have  heard 


FACIAL   EXPRESSION. 

two  very  intelligent  critics  speak  of  Murillo's  Immaculate  Con 
ception  (now  in  the  museum  at  Seville,)  within  the  past  few 
days.  One  said : 

"  Oh,  the  Virgin's  face  is  full  of  the  ecstasy  of  a  joy  that  is 
complete — that  leaves  nothing  more  to  be  desired  on  earth  !" 

The  other  said : 

"Ah,  that  wonderful  face  is  so  humble,  so  pleading — it  says 
as  plainly  as  words  could  say  it :  'I  fear ;  I  tremble  ;  I  am 
unworthy.  But  Thy  will  be  done ;  sustain  Thou  Thy  ser 
vant  !' " 

The  reader  can  see  the  picture  in  any  drawing-room  ;  it  can 
be  easily  recognized  :  the  Virgin  (the  only  young  and  really 
beautiful  Virgin  that  was  ever  painted  by  one  of  the  old  mas 
ters,  some  of  us  think,)  stands  in  the  crescent  of  the  new  moon, 
with  a  multitude  of  cherubs  hovering  about  her,  and  more 
coming  ;  her  hands  are  crossed  upon  her  breast,  and  upon  her 
uplifted  countenance  falls  a  glory  out  of  the  heavens.  The 
reader  may  amuse  himself,  if  he  chooses,  in  trying  to  deter 
mine  which  of  these  gentlemen  read  the  Virgin's  "  expression  " 
aright,  or  if  either  of  them  did  it. 

Any  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  old  masters  will  com 
prehend  how  much  the  Last  Supper  is  damaged  when  I  say 
that  the  spectator  can  not  really  tell,  now,  whether  the  dis 
ciples  are  Hebrews  or  Italians.  These  ancient  painters  never 


ITALY. — IN     THE     COUNTRY.  195 

succeeded  in  denationalizing  themselves.  The  Italian  artists 
painted  Italian  Virgins,  the  Dutch  painted  Dutch  Virgins,  the 
Virgins  of  the  French  painters  were  Frenchwomen — none  of 
them  ever  put  into  the  face  of  the  Madonna  that  indescribable 
something  which  proclaims  the  Jewess,  whether  you  find  her 
in  New  York,  in  Constantinople,  in  Paris,  Jerusalem,  or  in  the 
Empire  of  Morocco.  I  saw  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  once,  a 
picture,  copied  by  a  talented  German  artist  from  an  engraving 
in  one  of  the  American  illustrated  papers.  It  was  an  allegory, 
representing  Mr.  Davis  in  the  act  of  signing  a  secession  act  or 
some  such  document.  Over  him  hovered  the  ghost  of  Wash 
ington  in  warning  attitude,  and  in  the  background  a  troop  of 
shadowy  soldiers  in  Continental  uniform  were  limping  with 
shoeless,  bandaged  feet  through  a  driving  snow-storm.  Valley 
Forge  was  suggested,  of  course.  The  copy  seemed  accurate, 
and  yet  there  was  a  discrepancy  somewhere.  After  a  long  ex 
amination  I  discovered  what  it  was — the  shadowy  soldiers  were 
all  Germans !  Jeff.  Davis  was  a  German  !  even  the  hovering 
ghost  was  a  German  ghost !  The  artist  had  unconsciously 
worked  his  nationality  into  the  picture.  To  tell  the  truth,  I 
am  getting  a  little  perplexed  about  John  the  Baptist  and  his 
portraits.  In  France  I  finally  grew  reconciled  to  him  as  a 
Frenchman ;  here  he  is  unquestionably  an  Italian.  What 
next  ?  Can  it  be  possible  that  the  painters  make  John  the 
Baptist  a  Spaniard  in  Madrid  and  an  Irishman  in  Dublin  ? 

We  took  an  open  barouche  and  drove  two  miles  out  of  Milan 
to  "  see  ze  echo,"  as  the  guide  expressed  it.  The  road  was 
smooth,  it  was  bordered  by  trees,  fields,  and  grassy  meadows, 
and  the  soft  air  was  filled  with  the  odor  of  flowers.  Troops 
of  picturesque  peasant  girls,  coming  from  work,  hooted  at  us, 
shouted  at  us,  made  all  manner  of  game  of  us,  and  entirely 
delighted  me.  My  long-cherished  judgment  was  confirmed. 
I  always  did  think  those  frowsy,  romantic,  unwashed  peasant 
girls  I  had  read  so  much  about  in  poetry  were  a  glaring  fraud. 

We  enjoyed  our  jaunt.  It  was  an  exhilarating  relief  from 
tiresome  sight-seeing. 

We  distressed  ourselves  very  little  about   the  astonishing 


196 


A     WONDERFUL     ECHO. 


echo  the  guide  talked  so  much  about.  "We  were  growing 
accustomed  to  encomiums  on  wonders  that  too  often  proved  no 
wonders  at  all.  And  so  we  were  most  happily  disappointed  to 
find  in  the  sequel  that  the  guide  had  even  failed  to  rise  to  the 
magnitude  of  his  subject. 

AVe  arrived  at  a  tumble-down  old  rookery  called  the  Palazzo 
Simonetti — a  massive  hewn-stone  affair  occupied  by  a  family 


THE   ECHO. 


of  ragged  Italians.  A  good-looking  young  girl  conducted  us 
to  a  window  on  the  second  floor  which  looked  out  on  a  court 
walled  on  three  sides  by  tall  buildings.  She  put  her  head  out 
at  the  window  and  shouted.  The  echo  answered  more  times 
than  we  could  count.  She  took  a  speaking  trumpet  and 
through  it  she  shouted,  sharp  and  quick,  a  single 

"  Ha !"     The  echo  answered : 

"  Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha  !— ha  !-ha !    ha !  h-a-a-a-a-a  !" 


A     WONDERFILL     ECHO. 


197 


and  finally  went  off  into  a  rollicking  convulsion  of  the  jolliest 
laughter  that  could  be  imagined.  It  was  so  joyful — so  loner 
continued — so  perfectly  cordial  and  hearty,  that  every  body 
was  forced  to  join  in.  There  was  no  resisting  it. 

Then  the  girl  took  a  gun  and  fired  it.  We  stood  ready  to 
count  the  astonishing  clatter  of  reverberations.  We  could  not 
say  one,  two,  three,  fast  enough,  but  we  could  dot  our  note 
books  with  our  pencil  points  almost  rapidly  enough  to  take 
down  a  sort  of  short-hand  report  of  the  result.  My  page  re 
vealed  the  following  account.  I  could  not  keep  up,  but  I  did 
as  well  as  I  could  : 


FIFTY-TWO   DISTINCT    REPETITIONS. 


I  set  down  fifty-two  distinct  repetitions,  and  then  the  echo 
got  the  advantage  of  me.  The  doctor  set  down  sixty-four,  and 
thenceforth  the  echo  moved  too  fast  for  him,  also.  After  the 
separate  concussions  could  no  longer  be  noted,  the  reverbera 
tions  dwindled  to  a  wild,  long-sustained  clatter  of  sounds  such 
as  a  watchman's  rattle  produces.  It  is  likely  that  this  is  the 
most  remarkable  echo  iu  the  world. 


198 


A     KISS     FOR     A     FRANC. 


The  doctor,  in  jest,  offered  to  kiss  the  young  girl,  and  was 

taken  a  little  aback  when 
she  said  he  might  fora  franc ! 
The  commonest  gallantry 
compelled  him  to  stand  by 
his  offer,  and  so  he  paid  the 
franc  and  took  the  kiss.  She 
was  a  philosopher.  She  said 
a  franc  was  a  good  thing  to 
have,  and  she  did  not  care 
any  thing  for  one  paltry 
kiss,  because  she  had  a 
million  left.  Then  our 
comrade,  always  a  shrewd 
business  man,  offered  to 
take  the  whole  cargo  at 
thirty  days,  but  that  little 
financial  scheme  was  a  failure. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

"TTT~E  left  Milan  by  rail.     The  Cathedral  six  or  seven  miles 

*  V  behind  us — vast,  dreamy,  blueish  snow-clad  mountains 
twenty  miles  in  front  of  us, — these  were  the  accented  points  in 
the  scenery.  The  more  immediate  scenery  consisted  of  fields 
and  farm-houses  outside  the  car  and  a  monster-headed  dwarf  and 
a  moustached  woman  inside  it.  These  latter  were  not  show- 
people.  Alas,  deformity  and  female  beards  are  too  common  in 
Italy  to  attract  attention. 

We  passed  through  a  range  of  wild,  picturesque  hills,  steep, 
wooded,  cone-shaped,  with  rugged  crags  projecting  here  and 
there,  and  with  dwellings  and  ruinous  castles  perched  away  up 
toward  the  drifting  clouds.  We  lunched  at  the  curious  old 
town  of  Como,  at  the  foot  of  the  lake,  and  then  took  the  small 
steamer  and  had  an  afternoon's  pleasure  excursion  to  this 
place, — Bellaggio. 

When  we  walked  ashore,  a  party  of  policemen  (people  whose 
cocked  hats  and  showy  uniforms  would  shame  the  finest  uni 
form  in  the  military  service  of  the  United  States,)  put  us  into 
a  little  stone  cell  and  locked  us  in.  We  had  the  whole  passen 
ger  list  for  company,  but  their  room  would  have  been  prefer 
able,  for  there  was  no  light,  there  were  no  windows,  no  venti 
lation.  It  was  close  and  hot.  We  were  much  crowded.  It 
was  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  on  a  small  scale.  Presently 
a  smoke  rose  about  our  feet — a  smoke  that  smelt  of  all  the 
dead  things  of  earth,  of  all  the  putrefaction  and  corruption 
imaginable. 

We  were  there  five  minutes,  and  when  we  got  out  it  was 
hard  to  tell  which  of  us  carried  the  vilest  fragrance. 


200 


FUMIGATED. 


These  miserable  outcasts  called  that  "  fumigating  "  us,  and 
the  term  was  a  tame  one  indeed.  They  fumigated  us  to  guard 
themselves  against  the  cholera,  though  we  hailed  from  no  in 
fected  port.  We  had  left  the  cholera  far  behind  us  all  the 
time.  However,  they  must  keep  epidemics  away  somehow  or 
other,  and  fumigation  is  cheaper  than  soap.  They  must  either 
wash  themselves  or  fumigate  other  people.  Some  of  the  lower 
classes  had  rather  die  than  wash,  but  the  fumigation  of  stran- 


THE   FUMIGATIOX. 


gers  causes  them  no  pangs.  They  need  no  fumigation  them 
selves.  Their  habits  make  it  unnecessary.  They  carry  their 
preventive  with  them ;  they  sweat  and  fumigate  all  the  day 
long.  I  trust  I  am  a  humble  and  a  consistent  Christian.  I  try 
to  do  what  is  right.  I  know  it  is  my  duty  to  "  pray  for  them 
that  despitefully  use  me ;"  and  therefore,  hard  as  it  is,  I  shall 
still  try  to  pray  for  these  fumigating,  maccaroni-stuffing  organ 
grinders. 


NIGHT     BY     THE     LAKE     OF     COMO.  201 

Our  hotel  sits  at  the  water's  edge — at  least  its  front  garden 
(joes — .incl  we  walk  among  the  shrubbery  and  smoke  at  twi 
light  ;  we  look  afar  off  at  Switzerland  and  the  Alps,  and  feel 
an  indolent  willingness  to  look  no  closer ;  we  go  down  the 
steps  and  swim  in  the  lake  ;  we  take  a  shapely  little  boat  and 
sail  abroad  among  the  reflections  of  the  stars ;  lie  on  the 
thwarts  and  listen  to  the  distant  laughter,  the  singing,  the  soft 
melody  of  flutes  and  guitars  that  comes  floating  across  the  wa 
ter  from  pleasuring  gondolas ;  we  close  the  evening  with  exas 
perating  billiards  on  one  of  those  same  old  execrable  tables. 
A  midnight  luncheon  in  our  ample  bed-chamber ;  a  final  smoke 
in  its  contracted  veranda  facing  the  water,  the  gardens  and  the 
-mountains  ;  a  summing  up  of  the  day's  events.  Then  to  bed, 
with  drowsy  brains  harassed  with  a  mad  panorama  that  mixes 
up  pictures  of  France,  of  Italy,  of  the  ship,  of  the  ocean,  of 
home,  in  grotesque  and  bewildering  disorder.  Then  a  melting 
away  of  familiar  faces,  of  cities  and  of  tossing  waves,  into  a 
great  calm  of  forgetfulness  and  peace. 

After  which,  the  nightmare. 

Breakfast  in  the  morning,  and  then  the  Lake. 

I  did  not  like  it  yesterday.  I  thought  Lake  Tahoe  was  much 
finer.  I  have  to  confess  now,  however,  that  my  judgment 
erred  somewhat,  though  not  extravagantly.  I  always  had 
an  idea  that  Como  was  a  vast  basin  of  water,  like  Tahoe,  shut 
in  by  great  mountains.  Well,  the  border  of  huge  mountains 
is  here,  but  the  lake  itself  is  not  a  basin.  It  is  as  crooked  as 
any  brook,  and  only  from  one-quarter  to  two-thirds  as  wide  as 
the  Mississippi.  There  is  not  a  yard  of  low  ground  on  either 
side  of  it — nothing  but  endless  chains  of  mountains  that  spring 
abruptly  from  the  water's  edge,  and  tower  to  altitudes  varying 
from  a  thousand  to  two  thousand  feet.  Their  craggy  sides  are 
clothed  with  vegetation,  and  white  specks  of  houses  peep  out 
from  the  luxuriant  foliage  every  where ;  they  are  even  perched 
upon  jutting  and  picturesque  pinnacles  a  thousand  feet  above 
your  head. 

Again,  for  miles  along  the  shores,  handsome  country  seats, 
surrounded  by  gardens  and  groves,  sit  fairly  in  the  water,  some- 


202 


ITS     SCENERY. 


times  in  nooks  carved  by  Nature  out  of  the  vine-hung  preci 
pices,  and  with  no  ingress  or  egress  save  by  boats.  Some  have 
great  broad  stone  staircases  leading  down  to  the  water,  with 
heavy  stone  balustrades  ornamented  with  statuary  and  fanci 
fully  adorned  with  creeping  vines  and  bright-colored  flowers — 
for  all  the  world  like  a  drop-curtain  in  a  theatre,  and  lacking 
nothing  but  long-waisted,  high-heeled  women  and  plumed 
gallants  in  silken  tights  coming  down  to  go  serenading  in  the 
splendid  gondola  in  waiting. 


LAKE    COMO. 


A  great  feature  of  Como's  attractiveness  is  the  multitude  of 
pretty  houses  and  gardens  that  cluster  upon  its  shores  and  on 
its  mountain  sides.,  They  look  so  snug  and  so  homelike,  and 
at  eventide  when  every  thing  seems  to  slumber,  and  the  music 
of  the  vesper  bells  comes  stealing  over  the  water,  one  almost 
believes  that  nowhere  else  than  on  the  Lake  of  Como  can  there 
be  found  such  a  paradise  of  tranquil  repose. 


ITS     SCENERY.  203 

From  my  window  here  in  Bellaggio,  I  have  a  view  of  the 
other  side  of  the  lake  now,  which  is  as  beautiful  as  a  picture. 
A  scarred  and  wrinkled  precipice  rises  to  a  height  of  eighteen 
hundred  feet ;  on  a  tiny  bench  half  way  up  its  vast  wall,  sits  a 
little  snow-flake  of  a  church,  no  bigger  than  a  martin-box,  ap 
parently  ;  skirting  the  base  of  the  cliff  are  a  hundred  orange 
groves  and  gardens,  flecked  with  glimpses  of  the  white  dwell 
ings  that  are  buried  in  them ;  in  front,  three  or  four  gondolas 
lie  idle  upon  the  water — and  in  the  burnished  mirror  of  the 
lake,  mountain,  chapel,  houses,  groves  and  boats  are  counter 
feited  so  brightly  and  so  clearly  that  one  scarce  knows  where 
the  reality  leaves  off  and  the  reflection  begins ! 

The  surroundings  of  this  picture  are  fine.  A  mile  away,  a 
grove-plumed  promontory  juts  far  into  the  lake  and  glasses  its 
palace  in  the  blue  depths ;  in  midstream  a  boat  is  cutting  the 
shining  surface  and  leaving  a  long  track  behind,  like  a  ray  of 
light ;  the  mountains  beyond  are  veiled  in  a  dreamy  purple 
haze ;  far  in  the  opposite  direction  a  tumbled  mass  of  domes 
and  verdant  slopes  and  valleys  bars  the  lake,  and  here  indeed 
does  distance  lend  enchantment  to  the  view — for  on  this  broad 
canvas,  sun  and  clouds  and  the  richest  of  atmospheres  have 
blended  a  thousand  tints  together,  and  over  its  surface  the 
filmy  lights  and  shadows  drift,  hour  after  hour,  and  glorify  it 
with  a  beauty  that  seems  reflected  out  of  Heaven  itself.  Be 
yond  all  question,  this  is  the  most  voluptuous  scene  we  have 
yet  looked  upon. 

Last  night  the  scenery  was  striking  and  picturesque.  On  the 
other  side  crags  and  trees  and  snowy  houses  were  reflected  in 
the  lake  with  a  wonderful  distinctness,  and  streams  of  light 
from  many  a  distant  window  shot  far  abroad  over  the  still  wa 
ters.  On  this  side,  near  at  hand,  great  mansions,  white  with 
moonlight,  glared  out  from  the  midst  of  masses  of  foliage  that 
lay  black  and  shapeless  in  the  shadows  that  fell  from  the  cliff 
above — and  down  in  the  margin  of  the  lake  every  feature  of 
the  weird  vision  was  faithfully  repeated. 

To-day  we  have  idled  through  a  wonder  of  a  garden  attached 
to  a  ducal  estate — but  enough  of  description  is  enough,  I  judge. 


204        COMO  COMPARED  WITH  TAHOE. 

I  suspect  that  this  was  the  same  place  the  gardener's  son  de 
ceived  the  Lady  of  Lyons  with,  but  I  do  not  know.  You  may 
have  heard  of  the  passage  somewhere : 

"  A  deep  vale, 

Shut  out  by  Alpine  hills  from  the  rude  world, 
Near  a  clear  lake  margined  by  fruits  of  gold 
And  whispering  myrtles : 
Glassing  softest  skies,  cloudless, 
Save  with  rare  and  roseate  shadows ; 
A  palace,  lifting  to  eternal  heaven  its  marbled  walls, 
From  out  a  glossy  bower  of  coolest  foliage  musical  with  birds." 

That  is  all  very  well,  except  the  "clear"  part  of  the  lake. 
It  certainly  is  clearer  than  a  great  many  lakes,  but  how  dull 
its  waters  are  compared  with  the  wonderful  transparence  of 
Lake  Tahoe !  I  speak  of  the  north  shore  of  Tahoe,  where  one 
can  count  the  scales  on  a  trout  at  a  depth  of  a  hundred  and 
eighty  feet.  I  have  tried  to  get  this  statement  off  at  par  here, 
but  with  no  success ;  so  I  have  been  obliged  to  negotiate  it  at 
fifty  per  cent,  discount.  At  this  rate  I  find  some  takers ;  per 
haps  the  reader  will  receive  it  on  the  same  terms — ninety  feet 
instead  of  one  hundred  and  eighty.  But  let  it  be  remembered 
that  those  are  forced  terms — Sheriff's  sale  prices.  As  far  as  I 
am  privately  concerned,  I  abate  not  a  jot  of  the  original  asser 
tion  that  in  those  strangely  magnifying  waters  one  may  count 
the  scales  on  a  trout  (a  trout  of  the  large  kind,)  at  a  depth  of 
a  hundred  and  eighty  feet — may  see  every  pebble  on  the  bot 
tom — might  even  count  a  paper  of  dray-pins.  People  talk  of 
the  transparent  waters  of  the  Mexican  Bay  of  Acapulco,  but  in 
my  own  experience  I  know  they  can  not  compare  with  those  I  am 
speaking  of.  I  have  fished  for  trout,  in  Tahoe,  and  at  a  meas 
ured  depth  of  eighty-four  feet  I  have  seen  them  put  their  noses  to 
the  bait  and  I  could  see  their  gills  open  and  shut.  I  could  hardly 
have  seen  the  trout  themselves  at  that  distance  in  the  open  air. 

As  I  go  back  in  spirit  and  recall  that  noble  sea,  reposing 
among  the  snow-peaks  six  thousand  feet  above  the  ocean,  the 
conviction  comes  strong  upon  me  again  that  Como. would  only 
seem  a  bedizened  little  courtier  in  that  august  presence. 


COMO     COMPARED     WITH  TAHOE.  205 

Sorrow  and  misfortune  overtake  the  Legislature  that  still 
from  year  to  year  permits  Tahoe  to  retain  its  unmusical  cogno 
men  !  Tahoe !  It  suggests  no  crystal  waters,  no  picturesque 
shores,  no  sublimity.  Tahoe  for  a  sea  in  the  clouds  :  a  sea  that 
has  character,  and  asserts  it  in  solemn  calms,  at  times,  at  times 
in  savage  storms ;  a  sea,  whose  royal  seclusion  is  guarded  by  a 
cordon  of  sentinel  peaks  that  lift  their  frosty  fronts  nine  thou 
sand  feet  above  the  level  world ;  a  sea  whose  every  aspect  is 
impressive,  whose  belongings  are  all  beautiful,  whose  lonely 
majesty  types  the  Deity  ! 

Tahoe  means  grasshoppers.  It  means  grasshopper  soup. 
It  is  Indian,  and  suggestive  of  Indians.  They  say  it  is  Pi-ute — 
possibly  it  is  Digger.  I  am  satisfied  it  was  named  by  the  Dig 
gers — those  degraded  savages  who  roast  their  dead  relatives, 
then  mix  the  human  grease  and  ashes  of  bones  with  tar,  and 
"gaum"  it  thick  all  over  their  heads  and  foreheads  and  ears, 
and  go  caterwauling  about  the  hills  and  call  it  mourning. 
TJiese  are  the  gentry  that  named  the  Lake. 

People  say  that  Tahoe  means  ''Silver  Lake" — "Limpid  Wa 
ter" — "Falling  Leaf."  Bosh.  It  means  grasshopper  soup, 
the  favorite  dish  of  the  Digger  tribe — and  of  the  Pi-utes  as 
well.  It  isn't  worth  while,  in  these  practical  times,  for  people 
to  talk  about  Indian  poetry — there  never  was  any  in  them— 
except  in  the  Fennimore  Cooper  Indians.  But  they  are  an  ex 
tinct  tribe  that  never  existed.  I  know  the  Noble  Red  Man. 
I  have  camped  with  the  Indians ;  I  have  been  on  the  war 
path  with  them,  taken  part  in  the  chase  with  them — for  grass 
hoppers  ;  helped  them  steal  cattle  ;  I  have  roamed  with  them, 
scalped  them,  had  them  for  breakfast.  I  would  gladly  eat  the 
whole  race  if  I  had  a  chance. 

But  I  am  growing  unreliable.  I  will  return  to  my  compari 
son  of  the  Lakes.  Como  is  a  little  deeper  than  Tahoe,  if  peo 
ple  here  tell  the  truth.  They  say  it  is  eighteen  hundred  feet 
deep  at  this  point,  but  it  does  not  look  a  dead  enough  blue  for 
that.  Tahoe  is  one  thousand  five  hundred  and  twenty-five 
feet  deep  in  the  centre,  by  the  State  Geologist's  measurement. 
They  say  the  great  peak  opposite  this  town  is  five  thousand 


206  MEETING     A     SHIPMATE. 

feet  high :  but  I  feel  sure  that  three  thousand  feet  of  that  state 
ment  is  a  good  honest  lie.  The  lake  is  a  mile  wide,  here,  and 
maintains  about  that  width  from  this  point  to  its  northern  ex 
tremity — which  is  distant  sixteen  miles :  from  here  to  its  south 
ern  extremity — say  fifteen  miles — it  is  not  over  half  a  mile 
wide  in  any  place,  I  should  think.  Its  snow-clad  mountains 
one  hears  so  much  about  are  only  seen  occasionally,  and  then 
in  the  distance,  the  Alps.  Tahoe  is  from  ten  to  eighteen  miles 
wide,  and  its  mountains  shut  it  in  like  a  wall.  Their  summits 
are  never  free  from  snow  the  year  round.  One  thing  about  it 
is  very  strange :  it  never  has  even  a  skim  of  ice  upon  its  sur 
face,  although  lakes  in  the  same  range  of  mountains,  lying  in 
a  lower  and  warmer  temperature,  freeze  over  in  winter. 

It  is  cheerful  to  meet  a  shipmate  in  these  out-of-the-way 
places  and  compare  notes  with  him.  We  have  found  one  of 
ours  here — an  old  soldier  of  the  war,  who  is  seeking  bloodless 
adventures  and  rest  from  his  campaigns,  in  these  sunny  lands.* 

*  Col.  J.  HERON  FOSTER,  editor  of  a  Pittsburgh  journal,  and  a  most  estimable 
gentleman.  As  these  sheets  are  being  prepared  for  the  press,  I  am  pained  to  learn 
of  his  decease  shortly  after  his  return  home. — M.  T. 


CHAPTEE  XXI. 


~TTT~E  voyaged  by  steamer  down  the  Lago  di  Lecco,  through 
*  V  wild  mountain  scenery,  and  by  hamlets  and  villas, 
and  disembarked  at  the  town  of  Lecco.  They  said  it  was  two 
hours,  by  carriage  to  the  ancient  city  of  Bergamo,  and  that  we 
would  arrive  there  in  good  season  for  the  railway  train.  We 
got  an  open  barouche  and  a  wrild,  boisterous  driver,  and  set 
out.  It  was  delightful.  We  had  a  fast  team  and  a  perfectly 
smooth  road.  There  were  towering  cliffs  on  our  left,  and  the 
pretty  Lago  di  Lecco  on  our  right,  and  every  now  and  then  it 
rained  on  us.  Just  before  starting,  the  driver  picked  up,  in 
the  street,  a  stump  of  a  cigar  an  inch  long,  and  put  it  in  his 
mouth.  When  he  had  carried  it  thus  about  an  hour,  I  thought 
it  would  be  only  Christian  charity  to  give  him  a  light.  I 
handed  him  my  cigar, 
which  I  had  just 
lit,  and  he  put  it  in 
his  mouth  and  re 
turned  his  stump  to 
his  pocket !  I  never 
saw  a  more  sociable 
man.  At  least  I 
never  saw  a  man 
who  was  more  socia 
ble  on  a  short  ac 
quaintance.  SOCIAL  DRIVER. 

We    saw    interior 

Italy,   now.     The  houses  were  of  solid  stone,  and  not  often  in 
good  repair.     The  peasants  and  their  children  were  idle,  as 


208 


BLOODY     SHRINES. 


a  general  thing,  and  the  donkeys  and  chicken^  made  them 
selves  at  home  in  drawing-room  and  bed-chamber  and  were 
not  molested.  The  drivers  of  each  and  every  one  of  the 
slow-moving  market-carts  we  met  were  stretched  in  the  sun 
upon  their  merchandise,  sound  asleep.  Every  three  or  four 
hundred  yards,  it  seemed  to  me,  wTe  came  upon  the  shrine  of 
some  saint  or  other — a  rude  picture  of  him  built  into  a  huge 
cross  or  a  stone  pillar  by  the  road-side. — Some  of  the  pic 
tures  of  the  Saviour  were  curiosities  in  their  way.  They 

represented  him  stretch 
ed  upon  the  cross,  his 
countenance  distorted 
with  agony.  From  the 
wounds  of  the  crown 
of  thorns ;  from  the  pier 
ced  side  ;  from  the  mu 
tilated  hands  and  feet; 
from  the  scourged  body 
—from  every  hand- 
breadth  of  his  person 
streams  of  blood  were 
flowing!  Such  a  gory, 
ghastly  spectacle  would 
frighten  the  children  out 
of  their  senses,  I  should 
think.  There  were  some 
unique  auxiliaries  to  the 
painting  which  added 
to  its  spirited  effect. 
These  were  genuine 
wooden  and  iron  imple 
ments,  and  were  prominently  disposed  round  about  the  figure : 
a  bundle  of  nails ;  the  hammer  to  drive  them ;  the  sponge ; 
the  reed  that  supported  it ;  the  cup  of  vinegar ;  the  ladder 
for  the  ascent  of  the  cross ;  the  spear  that  pierced  the  Saviour's 
side.  The  crown  of  thorns  was  made  of  real  thorns,  and  was 
nailed  to  the  sacred  head.  In  some  Italian  church-paintings, 


WAYSIDE   SHRINE. 


HEART    AND    HOME    OF    PHI  ESTCK  AFT . 


209 


even  by  the  old  masters,  the  Saviour  and  the  Virgin  wear  silver 
or  gilded  crowns  that  are  fastened  to  the  pictured  head  with 
nails.  The  effect  is  as  grotesque  as  it  is  incongruous. 

Here  and  there,  on  the  fronts  of  roadside  inns,  we  found 
huge,  coarse  frescoes  of  suffering  martyrs  like  those  in  the 
shrines.  It  could  not  have  diminished  their  sufferings  any  to 
be  so  uncouthly  represented.  We  were  in  the  heart  and 
home  of  priestcraft — of  a  happy,  cheerful,  contented  ignorance, 
superstition,  degradation,  poverty,  indolence,  and  everlasting 
unaspiring  worthlessness.  And  we  said  fervently,  It  suits 
these  people  precisely ;  let  them  enjoy  it,  along  with  the  other 
animals,  and  Heaven  forbid  that  they  be  molested.  We  feel 
no  malice  toward  these  fumigators. 

We  passed  through  the  strangest,  funniest,  undreampt-of 
old  towns,  w^edded  to  the  customs  and  steeped  in  the  dreams 
of  the  elder  ages,  and  perfectly  unaware  that  the  world  turns 
round  !  And  perfectly  indifferent,  too,  as  to  whether  it  turns 
around  or  stands  still.  They  have  nothing  to  do  but  eat  and 
sleep  and  sleep  and  eat,  and  toil  a  little  when  they  can  get  a 
friend  to  stand  by  and  keep  them  awake.  They  are  not  paid 
for  thinking — they  are  not  paid  to  fret  about  the  world's  con 
cerns.  They  were 
not  respectable  peo 
ple — they  were  not 
worthy  people — 
they  were  not  learn 
ed  and  wise  and 
brilliant  people — 
but  in  their  breasts, 
all  their  stupid  lives 
long,  resteth  a  peace 
that  passeth  under 
standing  !  How  can  PEACE  AND  HAPPINESa 
men,  calling  them 
selves  men,  consent  to  be  so  degraded  and  happy. 

We  whisked  by  many  a  gray  old  medieval  castle,  clad  thick 
with  ivy  that  swung  its  green  banners  down  from  towers  and  tur- 

14 


210 


THRILLING     MEDIEVAL     ROMANCES. 


rets  where  once  some  old  Crusader's  flag  had  floated.  The  driver 
pointed  to  one  of  these  ancient  fortresses,  and  said,  (I  translate)  : 

"  Do  you  see  that  great  iron  hook  that  projects  from  the 
wall  just  under  the  highest  window  in  the  ruined  tower  ?" 

We  said  we  could  not  see  it  at  such  a  distance,  but  had  no 
doubt  it  was  there. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "there  is  a  legend  connected  with  that 


CASTLE  OF   COUNT   LUIGI. 


iron  hook.  JSTearly  seven  hundred  years  ago,  that  castle  was 
the  property  of  the  noble  Count  Luigi  Gennaro  Guido  Al- 
phonso  di  Gen  ova — 

"  What  was  his  other  name  ?"  said  Dan. 


THRILLING     MEDIEVAL     ROMANCE.  211 

"  lie  had  no  other  name.  The  name  I  have  spoken  was  all 
the  name  he  had.  He  was  the  son  of— 

"  Poor  but  honest  parents — that  is  all  right — never  mind  the 
particulars — go  on  with  the  legend." 

THE    LEGEND. 

Well,  then,  all  the  world,  at  that  time,  was  in  a  wild  excite 
ment  about  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  All  the  great  feudal  lords  in 
Europe  were  pledging  their  lands  and  pawning  their  plate  to 
fit  out  men-at-arms  so  that  they  might  join  the  grand  armies 
of  Christendom  and  win  renown  in  the  Holy  Wars.  The 
Count  Luigi  raised  money,  like  the  rest,  and  one  mild  Septem 
ber  morning,  armed  with  battle-ax,  portcullis  and  thundering 
culverin,  he  rode  through  the  greaves  and  bucklers  of  his 
donjon-keep  with  as  gallant  a  troop  of  Christian  bandits  as  ever 
stepped  in  Italy.  He  had  his  sword,  Excalibur,  with  him. 
His  beautiful  countess  and  her  young  daughter  waved  him  a 
tearful  adieu  from  the  battering-rams  and  buttresses  of  the 
fortress,  and  he  galloped  away  with  a  happy  heart. 

He  made  a  raid  on  a  neighboring  baron  and  completed  his 
outfit  with  the  booty  secured.  He  then  razed  the  castle  to  the 
ground,  massacred  the  family  and  moved  on.  They  were 
hardy  fellows  in  the  grand  old  days  of  chivalry.  Alas !  those 
days  will  never  come  again. 

Count  Luigi  grew  high  in  fame  in  Holy  Land.  He  plunged 
into  the  carnage  of  a  hundred  battles,  but  his  good  Excalibur 
always  brought  him  out  alive,  albeit  often  sorely  wounded. 
His  face  became  browned  by  exposure  to  the  Syrian  sun  in 
long  marches ;  he  suffered  hunger  and  thirst ;  he  pined  in 
prisons,  he  languished  in  loathsome  plague-hospitals.  And 
many  and  many  a  time  he  thought  of  his  loved  ones  at  home, 
and  wondered  if  all  was  well  with  them.  But  his  heart  said, 

Peace,  is  not  thy  brother  watching  over  thy  household  ? 
***•***•* 

Forty-two  years  waxed  and  waned  ;  the  good  fight  was  won  ; 
Godfrey  reigned  in  Jerusalem — the  Christian  hosts  reared  the 
banner  of  the  cross  above  the  Holy  Sepulchre ! 


212  THRILLING     MEDIEVAL     ROMANCE. 

Twilight  was  approaching.  Fifty  harlequins,  in  flowing 
robes,  approached  this  castle  wearily,  for  they  were  on  foot, 
and  the  dust  upon  their  garments  betokened  that  they  had 
traveled  far.  They  overtook  a  peasant,  and  asked  him  if  it 
were  likely  they  could  get  food  and  a  hospitable  bed  there,  for 
love  of  Christian  charity,  and  if  perchance,  a  moral  parlor 
entertainment  might  meet  with  generous  countenance — "  for," 
said  they,  "  this  exhibition  hath  no  feature  that  could  offend 
the  most  fastidious  taste." 

"  Marry,"  quoth  the  peasant,  "  an'  it  please  your  worships, 
ye  had  better  journey  many  a  good  rood  hence  with  your 
juggling  circus  than  trust  your  bones  in  yonder  castle." 

"  How  now,  sirrah !"  exclaimed  the  chief  monk,  "  explain 
thy  ribald  speech,  or  by'r  Lady  it  shall  go  hard  with  thee." 

"  Peace,  good  mountebank,  I  did  but  utter  the  truth  that 
was  in  my  heart.  San  Paolo  be  my  witness  that  did  ye  but  find 
the  stout  Count  Leonardo  in  his  cups,  sheer  from  the  castle's 
topmost  battlements  would  he  hurl  ye  all !  Alack-a-day,  the 
good  Lord  Luigi  reigns  not  here  in  these  sad  times." 

"  The  good  Lord  Luigi  ?" 

"  Aye,  none  other,  please  your  worship.  In  his  day,  the 
poor  rejoiced  in  plenty  and  the  rich  he  did  oppress ;  taxes  were 
not  known,  the  fathers  of  the  church  waxed  fat  upon  his 
bounty ;  travelers  went  and  came,  with  none  to  interfere ;  and 
whosoever  would,  might  tarry  in  his  halls  in  cordial  welcome, 
and  eat  his  bread  and  drink  his  wine,  withal.  But  wroe  is 
me !  some  two  and  forty  years  agone  the  good  count  rode 
hence  to  fight  for  Holy  Cross,  and  many  a  year  hath  flown 
since  word  or  token  have  we  had  of  him.  Men  say  his  bones 
lie  bleaching  in  the  fields  of  Palestine." 

"  And  now  ?" 

"  NOIV  !  God  'a  mercy,  the  cruel  Leonardo  lords  it  in  the 
castle.  He  wrings  taxes  from  the  poor ;  he  robs  all  travelers 
that  journey  by  his  gates ;  he  spends  his  days  in  feuds  and 
murders,  and  his  nights  in  revel  and  debauch ;  he  roasts  the 
fathers  of  the  church  upon  his  kitchen  spits,  and  enjoyeth  the 
same,  calling  it  pastime.  These  thirty  years  Luigi's  countess 


THRILLING     MEDIEVAL     ROMANCE.  213 

hath  not  been  seen  by  any  he  in  all  this  land,  and  many  whisper 
that  she  pines  in  the  dungeons  of  the  castle  for  that  she  will 
not  wed  with  Leonardo,  saying  her  dear  lord  still  liveth  and 
that  she  will  die  ere  she  prove  false  to  him.  They  whisper 
likewise  that  her  daughter  is  a  prisoner  as  well.  Nay,  good 
jugglers,  seek  ye  refreshment  other  wheres.  'Twere  better 
that  ye  perished  in  a  Christian  way  than  that  ye  plunged  from 
off  yon  dizzy  tower.  Give  ye  good-day." 

"  God  keep  ye,  gentle  knave — farewell." 

But  heedless  of  the  peasant's  warning,  the  players  moved 
straightway  toward  the  castle. 

Word  was  brought  to  Count  Leonardo  that  a  company  of 
mountebanks  besought  his  hospitality. 

"  -Tis  well.  Dispose  of  them  in  the  customary  manner. 
Yet  stay!  I  have  need  of  them.  Let  them  come  hither. 
Later,  cast  them  from  the  battlements — or — how  many  priests 
have  ye  on  hand  ?" 

"  The  day's  results  are  meagre,  good  my  lord.  An  abbot 
and  a  dozen  beggarly  friars  is  all  we  have." 

"  Hell  and  furies  !  Is  the  estate  going  to  seed  ?  Send  hither 
the  mountebanks.  Afterward,  broil  them  with  the  priests." 

The  robed  and  close-cowled  harlequins  entered.  The  grim 
Leonardo  sate  in  state  at  the  head  of  his  council  board. 
Ranged  up  and  down  the  hall  on  either  hand  stood  near  a 
hundred  men-at-arms. 

"  Ha,  villains  !"  quoth  the  count,  "  What  can  ye  do  to  earn 
the  hospitality  ye  crave." 

"  Dread  lord  and  mighty,  crowded  audiences  have  greeted 
our  humble  efforts  with  rapturous  applause.  Among  our 
body  count  we  the  versatile  and  talented  Ugolino ;  the  justly 
celebrated  Rodolpho ;  the  gifted  and  accomplished  Roderigo ; 
the  management  have  spared  neither  pains  nor  expense — 

"  S'death  !  what  can  ye  do?     Curb  thy  prating  tongue." 

"  Good  my  lord,  in  acrobatic  feats,  in  practice  with  the 
dumb-bells,  in  balancing  and  ground  and  lofty  tumbling  are 
we  versed — and  sith  your  highness  asketh  me,  I  venture  here 
to  publish  that  in  the  truly  marvelous  and  entertaining  Zam- 
pillaerostation — 


THRILLING     MEDIEVAL     ROMANCE. 

"  Gag  him  !  throttle  him  !  Body  of  Bacchus !  am  I  a  dog 
that  I  am  to  be  assailed  with  polysyllabled  blasphemy  like  to 
this  ?  But  hold  !  Lucretia,  Isabel,  stand  forth  !  Sirrah,  behold 
this  dame,  this  weeping  wench.  The  first  I  marry,  within  the 
hour;  the  other  shall  dry  her  tears  or  feed  the  vultures. 
Thou  and  thy  vagabonds  shall  crown  the  wedding  with  thy 
merry-makings.  Fetch  hither  the  priest !" 

The  dame  sprang  toward  the  chief  player. 

"  O,  save  me !"  she  cried ;  "  save  me  from  a  fate  far  worse 
than  death  !  Behold  these  sad  -eyes,  these  sunken  cheeks, 
this  withered  frame !  See  thou  the  wreck  this  fiend  hath 
made,  and  let  thy  heart  be  moved  with  pity !  Look  upon  this 
damosel;  note  her  wasted  form,  her  halting  step,  her  bloomless 
cheeks  where  youth  should  blush  and  happiness  exult  in 
smiles !  Hear  us  and  have  compassion.  This  monster  was 
my  husband's  brother.  He  who  should  have  been  our  shield 
against  all  harm,  hath  kept  us  shut  within  the  noisome  caverns 
of  his  donjon-keep  for  lo  these  thirty  years.  And  for  what 
crime  ?  None  other  than  that  I  would  not  belie  my  troth, 
root  out  my  strong  love  for  him  who  marches  with  the  legions 
of  the  cross  in  Holy  Land,  (for  O,  he  is  not  dead!)  and  wed 
with  him  !  Save  us,  O,  save  thy  persecuted  suppliants  !" 

She  flung  herself  at  his  feet  and  clasped  his  knees. 

"  Ha  !-ha  !-ha  !"  shouted  the  brutal  Leonardo.  "Priest,  to 
thy  work !"  and  he  dragged  the  weeping  dame  from  her 
refuge.  "  Say,  once  for  all,  will  you  be  mine  ? — for  by  my 
halidome,  that  breath  that  uttereth  thy  refusal  shall  be  thy  last 
on  earth !" 

"  NE-VER  ?" 

"  Then  die  !"  and  the  sword  leaped  from  its  scabbard. 

Quicker  than  thought,  quicker  than  the  lightning's  flash, 
fifty  monkish  habits  disappeared,  and  fifty  knights  in  splendid 
armor  stood  revealed !  fifty  falchions  gleamed  in  air  above  the 
men-at-arms,  and  brighter,  fiercer  than  them  all,  flamed  Excal- 
ibur  aloft,  and  cleaving  downward  struck  the  brutal  Leonardo's 
weapon  from  his  grasp  ! 

"  A  Luigi  to  the  rescue !    Whoop !" 


THE    BIRTHPLACE    OF    HARLEQUIN. 


215 


"  A  Leonardo  !  tare  an  onus  !" 

"  Oh,  God,  Oh,  God,  my  husband  !" 

"Oh,  God,  Oh,  God,  my  wife!" 

"  My  father!" 

"  My  precious !"     [Tableau.] 

Count  Luigi  bound  his  usurping  brother  hand  and  foot. 
The  practiced  knights  from 
Palestine  made  holy  day  sport 
of  carving  the  awkward  men- 
at-arms  into  chops  and  steaks. 
The  victory  was  complete. 
Happiness  reigned.  The 
knights  all  married  the  daugh 
ter.  Joy  !  wassail !  finis  ! 

"  But  what  did  they  do  with 
the  wicked  brother  ?" 

"  Oh  nothing — only  hanged 
him  on  that  iron  hook  I  was 
speaking  of.  By  the  chin." 

"As  how?" 

"Passed  it  up  through  his 
gills  into  his  mouth." 

"  Leave  him  there  ?"  WICKED  BROTHEU. 

"  Couple  of  years." 

«  Ah— is— is  he  dead  ?" 

"  Six  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  or  such  a  matter." 

"  Splendid  legend — splendid  lie — drive  on." 

"We  reached  the  quaint  old  fortified  city  of  Bergamo,  the 
renowned  in  history,  some  three-quarters  of  an  hour  before  the 
train  was  ready  to  start.  The  place  has  thirty  or  forty  thou 
sand  inhabitants  and  is  remarkable  for  being  tlie  birthplace 
of  harlequin.  When  we  discovered  that,  that  legend  of  our 
driver  took  to  itself  a  new  interest  in  our  eyes. 

Rested  and  refreshed,  we  took  the  rail  happy  and  contented. 
I  shall  not  tarry  to  speak  of  the  handsome  Lago  di  Gardi ; 
its  stately  castle  that  holds  in  its  stony  bosom  the  secrets  of 
an  age  so  remote  that  even  tradition  goeth  not  back  to  it ; 


216  APPROACHING     VENICE. 

the  imposing  mountain  scenery  that  ennobles  the  landscape 
thereabouts ;  nor  yet  of  ancient  Padua  or  haughty  Verona ; 
nor  of  their  Montagues  and  Capulets,  their  famous  balco 
nies  and  tombs  of  Juliet  and  Romeo  et  a/.,  but  hurry  straight 
to  the  ancient  city  of  the  sea,  the  widowed  bride  of  the 
Adriatic.  It  was  a  long,  long  ride.  But  toward  evening,  as 
we  sat  silent  and  hardly  conscious  of  where  we  were — sub 
dued  into  that  meditative  calm  that  comes  so  surely  after  a 
conversational  storm — some  one  shouted — 

"  VENICE  !" 

And  sure  enough,  afloat  on  the  placid  sea  a  league  away, 
lay  a  great  city,  with  its  towers  and  domes  and  steeples  drow 
sing  in  a  golden  mist  of  sunset. 


OHAPTEE  XXII. 

THIS  Venice,  which  was  a  haughty,  invincible,  magnificent 
Republic  for  nearly  fourteen  hundred  years ;  whose  ar 
mies  compelled  the  world's  applause  whenever  and  wherever 
they  battled ;  whose  navies  well  nigh  held  dominion  of  the 
seas,  and  whose  merchant  fleets  whitened  the  remotest  oceans 
with  their  sails  and  loaded  these  piers  with  the  products  of 
every  clime,  is  fallen  a  prey  to  poverty,  neglect  and  melancholy 
decay.  Six  hundred  years  ago,  Venice  was  the  Autocrat  of 
Commerce  ;  her  mart  was  the  great  commercial  centre,  the  dis 
tributing-house  from  wrhence  the  enormous  trade  of  the  Orient 
was  spread  abroad  over  the  Western  world.  To-day  her  piers 
are  deserted,  her  warehouses  are  empty,  her  merchant  fleets 
are  vanished,  her  armies  and  her  navies  are  but  memories. 
Her  glory  is  departed,  and  wTith  her  crumbling  grandeur  of 
wharves  and  palaces  about  her  she  sits  among  her  stagnant 
lagoons,  forlorn  and  beggared,  forgotten  of  the  world.  She  that 
in  her  palmy  days  commanded  the  commerce  of  a  hemisphere 
and  made  the  weal  or  woe  of  nations  with  a  beck  of  her  puis 
sant  finger,  is  become  the  humblest  among  the  peoples  of  the 
earth, — a  peddler  of  glass  beads  for  wromen,  and  trifling  toys 
and  trinkets  for  school-girls  and  children. 

The  venerable  Mother  of  the  Republics  is  scarce  a  fit  subject 
for  flippant  speech  or  the  idle  gossipping  of  tourists.  It  seems 
a  sort  of  sacrilege  to  disturb  the  glamour  of  old  romance  that 
pictures  her  to  us  softly  from  afar  off  as  through  a  tinted  mist, 
and  curtains  her  ruin  and  her  desolation  from  our  view.  One 
ought,  indeed,  to  turn  away  from  her  rags,  her  poverty  and 
her  humiliation,  and  tliink  of  her  only  as  she  was  when  she 


218  IN     SACKCLOTH     AND     ASHES. 

sunk  the  fleets  of  Charlemagne  ;  when  she  humbled  Frederick 
Barbarossa  or  waved  her  victorious  banners  above  the  battle 
ments  of  Constantinople. 

We  reached  Yenice  at  eight  in  the  evening,  and  entered  a 
hearse  belonging  to  the  Grand  Hotel  d'Europe.  At  any  rate, 
it  was  more  like  a  hearse  than  any  thing  else,  though  to  speak 
by  the  card,  it  was  a  gondola.  And  this  was  the  storied  gon 
dola  of  Venice  ! — the  fairy  boat  in  which  the  princely  cavaliers 
of  the  olden  time  were  wont  to  cleave  the  waters  of  the  moon 
lit  canals  and  look  the  eloquence  of  love  into  the  soft  eyes  of 
patrician  beauties,  while  the  gay  gondolier  in  silken  doublet 
touched  his  guitar  and  sang  as  only  gondoliers  can  sing !  This 
the  famed  gondola  and  this  the  gorgeous  gondolier ! — the  one 
an  inky,  rusty  old  canoe  with  a  sable  hearse-body  clapped  on  to 
the  middle  of  it,  and  the  other  a  mangy,  barefooted  gutter 
snipe  with  a  portion  of  his  raiment  on  exhibition  which  should 
have  been  sacred  from  public  scrutiny.  Presently,  as  he  turned 
a  corner  and  shot  his  hearse  into  a  dismal  ditch  between  two 
long  rows  of  towering,  untenanted  buildings,  the  gay  gondolier 
began  to  sing,  true  to  the  traditions  of  his  race.  I  stood  it  a 
little  while.  Then  I  said  : 

"  Now,  here,  Roderigo  Gonzales  Michael  Angelo,  I'm  a  pil 
grim,  and  I'm  a  stranger,  but  I  am  not  going  to  have  my  feel 
ings  lacerated  by  any  such  caterwauling  as  that.  If  that  goes 
on,  one  of  us  has  got  to  take  water.  It  is  enough  that  my 
cherished  dreams  of  Yenice  have  been  blighted  forever  as  to 
the  romantic  gondola  and  the  gorgeous  gondolier ;  this  system 
of  destruction  shall  go  no  farther ;  I  will  accept  the  hearse, 
under  protest,  and  you  may  fly  your  flag  of  truce  in  peace,  but 
here  I  register  a  dark  and  bloody  oath  that  you  shan't  sing. 
Another  yelp,  and  overboard  you  go." 

I  began  to  feel  that  the  old  Yenice  of  song  and  story  had 
departed  forever.  But  I  was  too  hasty.  In  a  few  minutes  we 
swept  gracefully  out  into  the  Grand  Canal,  and  under  the  mel 
low  moonlight  the  Yenice  of  poetry  and  romance  stood  re 
vealed.  Eight  from  the  water's  edge  rose  long  lines  of  stately 
palaces  of  marble ;  gondolas  were  gliding  swiftly  hither  and 


THE     GRAND     FETE     BY     MOONLIGHT.  219 

thither  and  disappearing  suddenly  through  unsuspected  gates 
and  alleys;  ponderous  stone  bridges  threw  their  shadows 
athwart  the  glittering  waves.  There  was  life  and  motion  every 
where,  and  yet  everywhere  there  was  a  hush,  a  stealthy  sort 
of  stillness,  that  was  suggestive  of  secret  enterprises  of  bravoes 
and  of  lovers ;  and  clad  half  in  moonbeams  and  half  in  mys 
terious  shadows,  the  grim  old  mansions  of  the  Republic  seemed 
to  have  an  expression  about  them  of  having  an  eye  out  for  just 
such  enterprises  as  these  at  that  same  moment.  Music  came 
floating  over  the  waters — Venice  was  complete. 

It  was  a  beautiful  picture — very  soft  and  dreamy  and  beau 
tiful.  But  what  was  this  Venice  to  compare  with  the  Venice 
of  midnight  ?  Kothing.  There  was  a  f&te — a  grand  fete  in 
honor  of  some  saint  who  had  been  instrumental  in  checking 
the  cholera  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  all  Venice  was  abroad 
on  the  water.  It  was  no  common  affair,  for  the  Venetians  did 
not  know  how  soon  they  might  need  the  saint's  services  again, 
now  that  the  cholera  was  spreading  every  where.  So  in  one 
vast  space — say  a  third  of  a  mile  wide  and  two  miles  long — 
were  collected  two  thousand  gondolas,  and  every  one  of  them 
had  from  two  to  »ten,  twenty  and  even  thirty  colored  lanterns, 
suspended  about  it,  and  from  four  to  a  dozen  occupants.  Just 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  these  painted  lights  were  massed 
together — like  a  vast  garden  of  many-colored  flowers,  except 
that  these  blossoms  were  never  still ;  they  were  ceaselessly  gli 
ding  in  and  out,  and  mingling  together,  and  seducing  you  into 
bewildering  attempts  to  follow  their  mazy  evolutions.  Here 
and  there  a  strong  red,  green,  or  blue  glare  from  a  rocket  that 
was  struggling  to  get  away,  splendidly  illuminated  all  the  boats 
around  it.  Every  gondola  that  swam  by  us,  with  its  crescents 
and  pyramids  and  circles  of  colored  lamps  hung  aloft,  and 
lighting  up  the  faces  of  the  young  and  the  sweet-scented  and 
lovely  below,  was  a  picture  ;  and  the  reflections  of  those  lights, 
so  long,  so  slender,  so  numberless,  so  many-colored  and  so  dis 
torted  and  wrinkled  by  the  waves,  was  a  picture  likewise,  and 
one  that  was  enchantingly  beautiful.  Many  and  many  a  party 
of  young  ladies  and  gentlemen  had  their  state  gondolas  hand- 


220  THE     GRAND     FETE     BY     MOONLIGHT. 

somely  decorated,  and  ate  supper  on  board,  bringing  their 
swallow-tailed,  white-cravatted  varlets  to  wait  upon  them,  and 
having  their  tables  tricked  out  as  if  for  a  bridal  supper.  They 
had  brought  along  the  costly  globe  lamps  from  their  drawing- 
rooms,  and  the  lace  and  silken  curtains  from  the  same  places, 
I  suppose.  And  they  had  also  brought  pianos  and  guitars,  and 
they  played  and  sang  operas,  while  the  plebeian  paper-lan 
terned  gondolas  from  the  suburbs  and  the  back  alleys  crowded 
around  to  stare  and  listen. 

There  was  music  every  where — chorusses,  string  bands,  brass 
bands,  flutes,  every  thing.  I  was  so  surrounded,  walled  in, 
with  music,  magnificence  and  loveliness,  that  I  became  inspired 
with  the  spirit  of  the  scene,  and  sang  one  tune  myself.  Plow- 
ever,  when  I  observed  that  the  other  gondolas  had  sailed  away, 
and  my  gondolier  was  preparing  to  go  overboard,  I  stopped. 


DISGUSTED    GONDOLIER. 


The  fete  was  magnificent.  They  kept  it  up  the  whole  night 
long,  and  I  never  enjoyed  myself  better  than  I  did  while  it 
lasted. 

What  a  funny  old  city  this  Queen  of  the  Adriatic  is !  Nar 
row  streets,  vast,  gloomy  marble  palaces,  black  with  the  cor 
roding  damps  of  centuries,  and  all  partly  submerged ;  no  dry 


VENICE     BY     MOONLIGHT.  221 

land  visible  any  where,  and  no  sidewalks  worth  mentioning ; 
if  you  want  to  go  to  church,  to  the  theatre,  or  to  the  restau 
rant,  you  must  call  a  gondola.  It  must  be  a  paradise  for  crip 
ples,  for  verily  a  man  has  no  use  for  legs  here. 

For  a  day  or  two  the  place  looked  so  like  an  overflowed  Ar 
kansas  town,  because  of  its  currentless  waters  laving  the  very 
doorsteps  of  all  the  houses,  and  the  cluster  of  boats  made  fast 
under  the  windows,  or  skimming  in  and  out  of  the  alleys  and 
by-ways,  that  I  could  not  get  rid  of  the  impression  that  there 
was  nothing  the  matter  here  but  a  spring  freshet,  and  that  the 
river  would  fall  in  a  few  weeks  and  leave  a  dirty  high-water 
mark  on  the  houses,  and  the  streets  full  of  mud  and  rubbish. 

In  the  glare  of  day,  there  is  little  poetry  about  Venice,  but 
under  the  charitable  moon  her  stained  palaces  are  white  again, 
their  battered  sculptures  are  hidden  in  shadows,  and  the  old 
city  seems  crowned  once  more  with  the  grandeur  that  was  hers 
five  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  easy,  then,  in  fancy,  to  people 
these  silent  canals  with  plumed  gallants  and  fair  ladies — with 
Shylocks  in  gaberdine  and  sandals,  venturing  loans  upon  the 
rich  argosies  of  Venetian  commerce — with  Othellos  and  Des- 
demonas,  with  lagos  and  Roderigos — with  noble  fleets  and  vic 
torious  legions  returning  from  the  wars.  In  the  treacherous 
sunlight  we  see  Venice  decayed,  forlorn,  poverty-stricken,  and 
commerceless — forgotten  and  utterly  insignificant.  But  in  the 
moonlight,  her  fourteen  centuries  of  greatness  fling  their  glo 
ries  about  her,  and  once  more  is  she  the  princeliest  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth. 

"  There  is  a  glorious  city  in  the  sea ; 
The  sea  is  in  the  broad,  the  narrow  streets, 
Ebbing  and  flowing ;  and  the  salt-sea  weed 
Clings  to  the  marble  of  her  palaces. 
No  track  of  men,  no  footsteps  to  and  fro, 
Lead  to  her  gates !     The  path  lies  o'er  the  sea, 
Invisible :  and  from  the  land  we  went, 
As  to  a  floating  city — steering  in, 
And  gliding  up  her  streets,  as  in  a  dream, 
So  smoothly,  silently — by  many  a  dome, 
Mosque-like,  and  many  a  stately  portico, 
The  statues  ranged  along  an  azure  sky ; 


222  NOTABLE     PLACES. 

By  many  a  pile,  in  more  than  Eastern  pride, 

Of  old  the  residence  of  merchant  kings; 

The  fronts  of  some,  tho'  time  had  shatter'd  them, 

Still  glowing  with  the  richest  hues  of  art, 

As  tho'  the  wealth  within  them  had  run  o'er." 

"What  would  one  naturally  wish  to  see  first  in  Venice  ?  The 
Bridge  of  Sighs,  of  course — and  next  the  Church  and  the 
Great  Square  of  St.  Mark,  the  Bronze  Horses,  and  the  famous 
Lion  of  St.  Mark. 

We  intended  to  go  to  the  Bridge  of  Sighs,  but  happened  into 
the  Ducal  Palace  first — a  building  which  necessarily  figures 
largely  in  Venetian  poetry  and  tradition.  In  the  Senate 
Chamber  of  the  ancient  Republic  we  wearied  our  eyes  with 
staring  at  acres  of  historical  paintings  by  Tintoretto  and  Paul 
Veronese,  but  nothing  struck  us  forcibly  except  the  one  thing 
that  strikes  all  strangers  forcibly — a  black  square  in  the  midst 
of  a  gallery  of  portraits.  In  one  long  row,  around  the  great 
hall,  were  painted  the  portraits  of  the  Doges  of  Venice  (ven 
erable  fellows,  with  flowing  white  beards,  for  of  the  three  hun 
dred  Senators  eligible  to  the  office,  the  oldest  was  usually 
chosen  Doge,)  and  each  had  its  complimentary  inscription 
attached — till  you  came  to  the  place  that  should  have  had  Ma 
rino  Faliero's  picture  in  it,  and  that  was  blank  and  black — 
blank,  except  that  it  bore  a  terse  inscription,  saying  that  the 
conspirator  had  died  for  his  crime.  It  seemed  cruel  to  keep  that 
pitiless  inscription  still  staring  from  the  walls  after  the  unhappy 
wretch  had  been  in  his  grave  five  hundred  years. 

At  the  head  of  the  Giant's  Staircase,  where  Marino  Faliero 
was  beheaded,  and  where  the  Doges  were  crowned  in  ancient 
times,  two  small  slits  in  the  stone  wall  were  pointed  out — two 
harmless,  insignificant  orifices  that  would  never  attract  a  stran 
ger's  attention — yet  these  were  the  terrible  Lions'  Mouths ! 
The  heads  were  gone  (knocked  off  by  the  French  during  their 
occupation  of  Venice,)  but  these  were  the  throats,  down  which 
went  the  anonymoiis  accusation,  thrust  in  secretly  at  dead  of 
night  by  an  enemy,  that  doomed  many  an  innocent  man  to 
walk  the  Bridge  of  Sighs  and  descend  into  the  dungeon  which 


COUNCIL     OF     THREE.  223 

none  entered  and  hoped  to  see  the  sun  again.  This  was  in  the 
old  days  when  the  Patricians  alone  governed  Venice — the 
common  herd  had  no  vote  and  no  voice.  There  were  one 
thousand  live  hundred  Patricians ;  from  these,  three  hundred. 
Senators  were  chosen ;  from  the  Senators  a  Doge  and  a  Coun 
cil  of  Ten  were  selected,  and  by  secret  ballot  the  Ten  chose 
from  their  own  number  a  Council  of  Three.  All  these  were 
Government  spies,  then,  and  every  spy  was  under  surveillance 
himself — men  spoke  in  wThispers  in  Venice,  and  no  man  trusted 
his  neighbor — not  always  his  own  brother.  No  man  knew 
who  the  Council  of  Three  were — not  even  the  Senate,  not  even 
the  Doge  ;  the  members  of  that  dread  tribunal  met  at  night  in 
a  chamber  to  themselves,  masked,  and  robed  from  head  to  foot 
in  scarlet  cloaks,  and  did  not  even  know  each  other,  unless  by 
voice.  It  was  their  duty  to  judge  heinous  political  crimes,  and 
from  their  sentence  there  \vas  no  appeal.  A  nod  to  the  exe 
cutioner  was  sufficient.  The  doomed  man  was  marched  down 
a  hall  and  out  at  a  door-way  into  the  covered  Bridge  of  Sighs, 
through  it  and  into  the  dungeon  and  unto  his  death.  At  no 
time  in  his  transit  was  he  visible  to  any  save  his  conductor.  If 
a  man  had  an  enemy  in  those  old  clays,  the  cleverest  thing  he 
could  do  was  to  slip  a  note  for  the  Council  of  Three  into  the 
Lion's  mouth,  saying  "  This  man  is  plotting  against  the  Gov 
ernment."  If  the  awful  Three  found  no  proof,  ten  to  one  they 
would  drown  him  anyhow,  because  he  was  a  deep  rascal,  since 
his  plots  were  unsolvable.  Masked  judges  and  masked  exe 
cutioners,  with  unlimited  power,  and  no  appeal  from  their  judg 
ments,  in  that  hard,  cruel  age,  were  not  likely  to  be  lenient 
wit^i  men  they  suspected  yet  could  not  convict. 

"We  walked  through  the  hall  of  the  Council  of  Ten,  and 
presently  entered  the  infernal  den  of  the  Council  of  Three. 

The  table  around  which  they  had  sat  was  there  still,  and 
likewise  the  stations  where  the  masked  inquisitors  and  exe 
cutioners  formerly  stood,  frozen,  upright  and  silent,  till  they  re 
ceived  a  bloody  order,  and  then,  without  a  word,  moved  off, 
like  the  inexorable  machines  they  were,  to  carry  it  out.  The 
frescoes  on  the  walls  were  startlingly  suited  to  the  place.  In 


224  THE     PRISON. 

all  the  other  saloons,  the  halls,  the  great  state  chambers  of  the 
palace,  the  walls  and  ceilings  were  bright  with  gilding,  rich 
with  elaborate  carving,  and  resplendent  with  gallant  pictures 
of  Venetian  victories  in  war,  and  Yenetian  display  in  foreign 
courts,  and  hallowed  with  portraits  of  the  Virgin,  the  Saviour 
of  men,  and  the  holy  saints  that  preached  the  Gospel  of  Peace 
upon  earth — but  here,  in  dismal  contrast,  were  none  but  pic 
tures  of  death  and  dreadful  suffering ! — not  a  living  figure  but 
was  writhing  in  torture,  not  a  dead  one  but  was  smeared  w^ith 
blood,  gashed  with  wounds,  and  distorted  with  the  agonies 
that  had  taken  away  its  life  ! 

From  the  palace  to  the  gloomy  prison  is  but  a  step — one 
might  almost  jump  across  the  narrow  canal  that  intervenes. 
The  ponderous  stone  Bridge  of  Sighs  crosses  it  at  the  second 
story — a  bridge  that  is  a  covered  tunnel — you  can  -not  be  seen 
when  you  walk  in  it.  It  is  partitioned  lengthwise,  and  through 
one  compartment  walked  such  as  bore  light  sentences  in  an 
cient  times,  and  through  the  other  marched  sadly  the  wretches 
whom  the  Three  had  doomed  to  lingering  misery  and  utter 
oblivion  in  the  dungeons,  or  to  sudden  and  mysterious  death. 
Down  below  the  level  of  the  water,  by  the  light  of  smoking 
torches,  we  were  shown  the  damp,  thick-walled  cells  where 
many  a  proud  patrician's  life  was  eaten  away  by  the  long- 
drawn  miseries  of  solitary  imprisonment — without  light,  air, 
books  ;  naked,  unshaven,  uncombed,  covered  with  vermin  ;  his 
useless  tongue  forgetting  its  office,  with  none  to  speak  to ;  the 
days  and  nights  of  his  life  no  longer  marked,  but  merged  into 
one  eternal  eventless  night ;  far  away  from  all  cheerful  sounds, 
buried  in  the  silence  of  a  tomb ;  forgotten  by  his  helpless 
friends,  and  his  fate  a  dark  mystery  to  them  forever ;  losing  his 
own  memory  at  last,  and  knowing  no  more  who  he  was  or  how  he 
came  there ;  devouring  the  loaf  of  bread  and  drinking  the  wa 
ter  that  were  thrust  into  the  cell  by  unseen  hands,  and  troubling 
his  worn  spirit  no  more  with  hopes  and  fears  and  doubts  and 
longings  to  be  free ;  ceasing  to  scratch  vain  prayers  and  com 
plainings  on  walls  where  none,  not  even  himself,  could  see 
them,  and  resigning  himself  to  hopeless  apathy,  driveling  child- 


IMPLEMENTS     OF     TORTURE.  225 

ishness,  lunacy !  Many  and  many  a  sorrowful  story  like  this 
these  stony  walls  could  tell  if  they  could  but  speak. 

In  a  little  narrow  corridor,  near  by,  they  showed  us  where 
many  a  prisoner,  after  lying  in  the  dungeons  until  he  was  for 
gotten  by  all  save  his  persecutors,  was  brought  by  masked  exe 
cutioners  and  garroted,  or  sewed  up  in  a  sack,  passed  through 
a  little  window  to  a  boat,  at  dead  of  night,  and  taken  to  some 
remote  spot  and  drowned. 

They  used  to  show  to  visitors  the  implements  of  torture  where 
with  the  Three  were  wont  to  worm  secrets  out  of  the  accused- 
villainous  machines  for  crushing  thumbs ;  the  stocks  where  a 
prisoner  sat  immovable  while  water  fell  drop  by  drop  upon  his 
head  till  the  torture  was  more  than  humanity  could  bear ;  and 
a  devilish  contrivance  of  steel,  which  inclosed  a  prisoner's  head 
like  a  shell,  and  crushed  it  slowly  by  means  of  a  screw.  It 
bore  the  stains  of  blood  that  had  trickled  through  its  joints 
long  ago,  and  on  one  side  it  had  a  projection  whereon  the  tor 
turer  rested  his  elbow  comfortably  and  bent  down  his  ear  to 
catch  the  moanings  of  the  sufferer  perishing  within. 

Of  course  we  went  to  see  the  venerable  relic  of  the  ancient 
glory  of  Venice,  with  its  pavements  worn  and  broken  by  the 
passing  feet  of  a  thousand  years  of  plebeians  and  patricians — The 
Cathedral  of  St.  Mark.  It  is  built  entirely  of  precious  marbles, 
brought  from  the  Orient — nothing  in  its  composition  is  domestic. 
Its  hoary  traditions  make  it  an  object  of  absorbing  interest  to 
even  the  most  careless  stranger,  and  thus  far  it  had  interest  for 
me ;  but  no  further.  I  could  not  go  into  ecstacies  over  its 
coarse  mosaics,  its  unlovely  Byzantine  architecture,  or  its  five 
hundred  curious  interior  columns  from  as  many  distant  quarries. 
Every  thing  was  worn  out — every  block  of  stone  was  smooth 
and  almost  shapeless  with  the  polishing  hands  and  shoulders 
of  loungers  who  devoutly  idled  here  in  by-gone  centuries  and 
have  died  and  gone  to  the  dev — no,  simply  died,  I  mean. 

Under  the  altar  repose  the  ashes  of  St.  Mark — and  Matthew, 
Luke  and  John,  too,  for  all  I  know.  Venice  reveres  those  rel 
ics  above  all  things  earthly.  For  fourteen  hundred  years  St. 
Mark  has  been  her  patron  saint.  Every  thing  about  the  city 

15 


226 


THE     GLORY     OF     VENICE. 


seems  to  be  named  after  him  or  so  named  as  to  refer  to  him  in 
some  way — so  named,  or  some  purchase  rigged  in  some  way  to 
scrape  a  sort  of  hurrahing  acquaintance  with  him.  That  seems 
to  be  the  idea.  To  be  on  good  terms  with  St.  Mark,  seems  to 
be  the  very  summit  of  Venetian  ambition.  They  say  St.  Mark 
had  a  tame  lion,  and  used  to  travel  with  him — and  every  where 


THE   CATHEDRAL   OF   ST.    MAKK  S. 


that  St.  Mark  went,  the  lion  was  sure  to  go.  It  was  his  pro 
tector,  his  friend,  his  librarian.  And  so  the  Winged  Lion  of 
St.  Mark,  with  the  open  Bible  under  his  paw,  is  a  favorite  em 
blem  in  the  grand  old  city.  It  casts  its  shadow  from  the  most 
ancient  pillar  in  Venice,  in  the  Grand  Square  of  St.  Mark, 
upon  the  throngs  of  free  citizens  below,  and  has  so  done  for 
many  a  long  century.  The  winged  lion  is  found  every  where — 
and  doubtless  here,  where  the  winged  lion  is,  no  harm  can 
come. 


A     TREASURE     SECURED.  227 

St.  Mark  died  at  Alexandria,  in  Egypt.  He  was  martyred, 
I  think.  However,  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  my  legend. 
About  the  founding  of  the  city  of  Venice — say  four  hundred 
and  fifty  years  after  Christ — (for  Venice  is  much  "younger  than 
any  other  Italian  city,)  a  priest  dreamed  that  an  angel  told  him 
that  until  the  remains  of  St.  Mark  were  brought  to  Venice, 
the  city  could  never  rise  to  high  distinction  among  the  nations ; 
that  the  body  must  be  captured,  brought  to  the  city,  and  a 
magnificent  church  built  over  it ;  and  that  if  ever  the  Vene 
tians  allowed  the  Saint  to  be  removed  from  his  new  resting- 
place,  in  that  day  Venice  would  perish  from  off  the  face  of  the 
the  earth.  The  priest  proclaimed  his  dream,  and  forthwith 
Venice  set  about  procuring  the  corpse  of  St.  Mark.  One  ex 
pedition  after  another  tried  and  failed,  but  the  project  was 
never  abandoned  during  four  hundred  years.  At  last  it  was 
secured  by  stratagem,  in  the  year  eight  hundred  and  something. 
The  commander  of  a  Venetian  expedition  disguised  himself, 
stole  the  bones,  separated  them,  and  packed  them  in  vessels 
filled  with  lard.  The  religion  of  Mahomet  causes  its  devotees 
to  abhor  anything  that  is  in  the  nature  of  pork,  and  so  when 
the  Christian  was  stopped  by  the  officers  at  the  gates  of  the  city, 
they  only  glanced  once  into  his  precious  baskets,  then  turned 
up  their  noses  at  the  unholy  lard,  and  let  him  go.  The  bones 
were  buried  in  the  vaults  of  the  grand  cathedral,  which  had 
been  waiting  long  years  to  receive  them,  and  thus  the  safety 
and  the  greatness  of  Venice  were  secured.  And  to  this  day 
there  be  those  in  Venice  who  believe  that  if  those  holy  ashes 
were  stolen  away,  the  ancient  city  would  vanish  like  a  dream, 
and  its  foundations  be  buried  forever  in  the  unremembering 
sea. 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

THE  Venetian  gondola  is  as  free  and  graceful,  in  its 
gliding  movement,  as  a  serpent.  It  is  twenty  or  thirty 
feet  long,  and  is  narrow  and  deep,  like  a  canoe ;  its  sharp 
bow  and  stern  sweep  upward  from  the  water  like  the  horns 
of  a  crescent  with  the  abruptness  of  the  curve  slightly  modi 
fied. 

The  bow  is  ornamented  with  a  steel  comb  with  a  battle-ax 
attachment  which  threatens  to  cut  passing  boats  in  two  occa 
sionally,  but  never  does.  The  gondola  is  painted  black  be 
cause  in  the  zenith  of  Venetian  magnificence  the  gondolas  be 
came  too  gorgeous  altogether,  and  the  Senate  decreed  that  all 
such  display  must  cease,  and  a  solemn,  unembellished  black  be 
substituted.  If  the  truth  were  known,  it  would  doubtless 
appear  that  rich  plebeians  grew  too  prominent  in  their  affec 
tation  of  patrician  show  on  the  Grand  Canal,  and  required  a 
wholesome  snubbing.  Reverence  for  the  hallowed  Past  and 
its  traditions  keeps  the  dismal  fashion  in  force  now  that  the 
compulsion  exists  no  longer.  So  let  it  remain.  It  is  the 
color  of  mourning.  Venice  mourns.  The  stern  of  the  boat 
is  decked  over  and  the  gondolier  stands  there.  He  uses  a 
single  oar — a  long  blade,  of  course,  for  he  stands  nearly  erect. 
A  wooden  peg,  a  foot  and  a  half  high,  with  two  slight  crooks 
or  curves  in  one  side  of  it  and  one  in  the  other,  projects  above 
the  starboard  gunwale.  Against  that  peg  the  gondolier  takes 
a  purchase  with  his  oar,  changing  it  at  intervals  to  the  other 
side  of  the  peg  or  dropping  it  into  another  of  the  crooks,  as 
the  steering  of  the  craft  may  demand — and  how  in  the  world 


GONDOLIZING.  229 

he  can  back  and  fill,  slioot  straight  ahead,  or  flirt  suddenly 
around  a  corner,  and  make  the  oar  stay  in  those  insignificant 
notches,  is  a  problem  to  me  and  a  never  diminishing  matter 
of  interest.     I  am  afraid  I  study  the  gondo 
lier's   marvelous   skill    more   than  I    do   the 
sculptured    palaces    we    glide    among.      lie 
cuts  a  corner  so   closely,  now  and   then,  or 
misses  another  gondola  by  «uch   an  imper 
ceptible    hair-breadth     that    I    feel    myself 
"  scrooching,"   as   the   children    say,   just  as 
one  does    when    a    buggy   wheel   grazes  his 
elbow.     But  he   makes   all  his    calculations 

PEG. 

with  the  nicest   precision,  and   goes  darting 
in   and  out  among  a  Broadway  confusion  of  busy  craft  w^ith 
the  easy   confidence   of  the   educated  hackman.     He   never 
makes  a  mistake. 

Sometimes  we  go  flying  down  the  great  canals  at  such  a  gait 
that  we  can  get  only  the  merest  glimpses  into  front  doors,  and 
again,  in  obscure  alleys  in.  the  suburbs,  we  put  on  a  solemnity 
suited  to  the  silence,  the  mildew,  the  stagnant  waters,  the 
clinging  weeds,  the  deserted  houses  and  the  general  lifeless- 
ness  of  the  place,  and  move  to  the  spirit  of  grave  medita 
tion. 

The  gondolier  is  a  picturesque  rascal  for  all  he  wears  no 
satin  harness,  no  plumed  bonnet,  no  silken  tights.  His  atti 
tude  is  stately ;  he  is  lithe  and  supple ;  all  his  movements  are 
full  of  grace.  When  his  long  canoe,  and  his  fine  figure,  tow 
ering  from  its  high  perch  on  the  stern,  are  cut  against  the 
evening  sky,  they  make  a  picture  that  is  very  novel  and  strik 
ing  to  a  foreign  eye. 

We  sit  in  the  cushioned  carriage-body  of  a  cabin,  with  the 
curtains  drawn,  and  smoke,  or  read,  or  look  out  upon  the  pass 
ing  boats,  the  houses,  the  bridges,  the  people,  and  enjoy  our 
selves  much  more  than  we  could  in  a  buggy  jolting  over  our 
cobble-stone  pavements  at  home.  This  is  the  gentlest,  pleas- 
antest  locomotion  wre  have  ever  known. 

But  it  seems  queer — ever  so  queer — to  see  a  boat  doing 


230  GONDOLIZING. 

duty  as  a  private  carriage.  We  see  business  men  come  to  the 
front  door,  step  into  a  gondola,  instead  of  a  street  car,  and  go 
off  down  town  to  the  counting-room. 

We  see  visiting  young  ladies  stand  on  the  stoop,  and  laugh, 
and  kiss  good-bye,  and  flirt  their  fans  and  say  "  Come  soon — 


"  GOOD-BYE. 


now  do — you've  been  just  as  mean  as  ever  you  can  be — 
mother's  dying  to  see  you — and  we've  moved  into  the  new 
house,  O  such  a  love  of  a  place ! — so  convenient  to  the  post- 
office  and  the  church,  and  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso 
ciation  ;  and  we  do  have  such  fishing,  and  such  carrying  on, 


SHOPPING     BY     WATER.  231 

and  such  swimming-matches  in  the  back  yard — Oh,  you  must 
come — no  distance  at  all,  and  if  you  go  down  through  by  St. 
Mark's  and  the  Bridge  of  Sighs,  and  cut  through  the  alley  and 
come  up  by  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  dei  Frari,  and  into  the 
Grand  Canal,  there  isn't  a  bit  of  current — now  do  come,  Sally 
Maria — by-bye !"  and  then  the  little  humbug  trips  down  the 
steps,  jumps  into  the  gondola,  says,  under  her  breath,  "  Disa 
greeable  old  thing,  I  hope  she  ivorftf"  goes  skimming  away, 
round  the  corner ;  and  the  other  girl  slams  the  street  door  and 
says,  "  Well,  that  infliction's  over,  any  way, — but  I  suppose 
I've  got  to  go  and  see  her — tiresome  stuck-up  thing  !"  Hu 
man  nature  appears  to  be  just  the  same,  all  over  the  world. 
We  see  the  diffident  young  man,  mild  of  moustache,  affluent 
of  hair,  indigent  of  brain,  elegant  of  costume,  drive  up  to  her 
father's  mansion,  tell  his  hackman  to  bail  out  and  wait,  start 
fearfully  up  the  steps  and  meet  "  the  old  gentleman  "  right  on 
the  threshold ! — hear  him  ask  what  street  the  new  British 
Bank  is  in — as  if  that  were  what  he  came  for — and  then 
bounce  into  his  boat  and  skurry  away  with  his  coward  heart 
in  his  boots ! — see  him  come  sneaking  around"  the  corner 
again,  directly,  with  a  crack  of  the  curtain  open  toward  the 
old  gentleman's  disappearing  gondola,  and  out  scampers  his 
Susan  with  a  flock  of  little  Italian  endearments  fluttering 
from  her  lips,  and  goes  to  drive  with  him  in  the  watery 
avenues  down  toward  the  Rialto. 

"We  see  the  ladies  go  out  shopping,  in  the  most  natural  way, 
and  flit  from  street  to  street  and  from  store  to  store,  just  in 
the  good  old  fashion,  except  that  they  leave  the  gondola,  in 
stead  of  a  private  carriage,  waiting  at  the  curbstone  a  couple  of 
hours  for  them, — waiting  while  they  make  the  nice  young 
clerks  pull  down  tons  and  tons  of  silks  and  velvets  and  moire 
antiques  and  those  things ;  and  then  they  buy  a  paper  of  pins 
and  go  paddling  away  to  confer  the  rest  of  their  disastrous 
patronage  on  some  other  firm.  And  they  always  have  their 
purchases  sent  home  just  in  the  good  old  way.  Human  na 
ture  is  very  much  the  same  all  over  the  world ;  and  it  is  so 
like  my  dear  native  home  to  see  a  Venetian  lady  go  into  a 


232  GAIETIES     BY     GASLIGHT. 

store  and  buy  ten  cents'  worth  of  blue  ribbon  and  have  it  sent 
Lome  in  a  scow.  Ah,  it  is  these  little  touches  of  nature  that 
move  one  to  tears  in  these  far-off  foreign  lands. 

"We  see  little  girls  and  boys  go  out  in  gondolas  with  their 
nurses,  for  an  airing.  "We  see  staid  families,  with  prayer-book 
and  beads,  enter  the  gondola  dressed  in  their  Sunday  best,  and 
float  away  to  church.  And  at  midnight  we  see  the  theatre 
break  up  and  discharge  its  swarm  of  hilarious  youth  and 
beauty;  we  hear  the  cries  of  the  hackman-gondoliers,  and 
behold  the  struggling  crowd  jump  aboard,  and  the  black 
multitude  of  boats  go  skimming  down  the  moonlit  avenues; 
we  see  them  separate  here  and  there,  and  disappear  up  diver 
gent  streets ;  we  hear  the  faint  sounds  of  laughter  and  of 
shouted  farewells  floating  up  out  of  the  distance  ;  and  then, 
the  strange  pageant  being  gone,  we  have  lonely  stretches  of 
glittering  water — of  stately  buildings — of  blotting  shadows — • 
of  weird  stone  faces  creeping  into  the  moonlight — of  deserted 
bridges — of  motionless  boats  at  anchor.  And  over  all  broods 
that  mysterious  stillness,  that  stealthy  quiet,  that  befits  so  well 
this  old  dreaming  Venice. 

We  have  been  pretty  much  every  where  in  our  gondola. 
"We  have  bought  beads  and  photographs  in  the  stores,  and  wax 
matches  in  the  Great  Square  of  St.  Mark.  The  last  remark 
suggests  a  digression.  Every  body  goes  to  this  vast  square  in 
the  evening.  The  military  bands  play  in  the  centre  of  it  and 
countless  couples  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  promenade  up  and 
down  on  either  side,  and  platoons  of  them  are  constantly 
drifting  away  toward  the  old  Cathedral,  and  by  the  venerable 
column  with  the  Winged  Lion  of  St.  Mark  on  its  top,  and  out 
to  where  the  boats  lie  moored  ;  and  other  platoons  are  as  con 
stantly  arriving  from  the  gondolas  and  joining  the  great 
throng.  Between  the  promenaders  and  the  side-walks  are 
seated  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  people  at  small  tables, 
smoking  and  taking  granita,  (a  first  cousin  to  ice-cream ;)  on 
the  side-walks  are  more  employing  themselves  in  the  same 
way.  The  shops  in  the  first  floor  of  the  tall  rows  of  buildings 
that  wall  in  three  sides  of  the  square  are  brilliantly  lighted, 


AMERICAN     SNOBS     ABROAD.  233 

the  air  is  filled  with  music  and  merry  voices,  and  altogether 
the  scene  is  as  bright  and  spirited  and  full  of  cheerfulness  as 
any  man  could  desire.  We  enjoy  it  thoroughly.  Very  many 
of  the  young  women  are  exceedingly  pretty  and  dress  with 
rare  good  taste.  We  are  gradually  and  laboriously  learning 
the  ill-manners  of  staring  them  unflinchingly  in  the  face — not 
because  such  conduct  is  agreeable  to  us,  but  because  it  is  the 
custom  of  the  country  and  they  say  the  girls  like  it.  We  wish 
to  learn  all  the  curious,  outlandish  ways  of  all  the  different 
countries,  so  that  we  can  "  show  off"  and  astonish  people 
when  we  get  home.  We  wish  to  excite  the  envy  of  our  un- 
traveled  friends  with  our  strange  foreign  fashions  which  we 
can't  shake  off.  All  our  passengers  are  paying  strict  atten 
tion  to  this  thing,  with  the  end  in '  view  which  I  have 
mentioned.  The  gentle  reader  will  never,  never  know 
what  a  consummate  ass  he  can  become,  until  he  goes  abroad. 
I  speak  now,  of  course,  in  the  supposition  that  the  gentle 
reader  has  not  been  abroad,  and  therefore  is  not  already  a  con 
summate  ass.  If  the  case  be  otherwise,  I  beg  his  pardon  and 
extend  to  him  the  cordial  hand  of  fellowship  and  call  him 
brother.  I  shall  always  delight  to  meet  an  ass  after  mv  own 

V  «/ 

heart  when  I  shall  have  finished  my  travels. 

On  this  subject  let  me  remark  that  there  are  Americans 
abroad  in  Italy  who  have  actually  forgotten  their  mother 
tongue  in  three  months — forgot  it  in  France.  They  can  not 
even  write  their  address  in  English  in  a  hotel  register.  I  ap 
pend  these  evidences,  which  I  copied  verbatim  from  the  regis 
ter  of  a  hotel  in  a  certain  Italian  city : 

"John  P.  Whitcomb,  Etats  Unis. 

"  Wm.  L.  Ainsworth,  travaitteur  (he  meant  traveler,  I  suppose,)  Etats  Unis. 
"  George  P.  Morton  et  fils,  <T  Amerique. 
"  Lloyd  B.  Williams,  et  trois  amis,  mile  de  Boston,  Amerique. 
"  J.  Ellsworth  Baker,  taut  de  suite  de  France,  place  de  naissance  Amerique,  desti 
nation  la  Grand  Bretagne." 

I  love  this  sort  of  people.  A  lady  passenger  of  ours  tells 
of  a  fellow-citizen  of  hers  who  spent  eight  weeks  in  Paris  and 
then  returned  home  and  addressed  his  dearest  old  bosom 


234 


AMERICAN     SNOBS     AT     HOME. 


friend  Herbert  as  Mr.  "  Er-bare !"  He  apologized,  though, 
and  said,  "  'Pon  my  soul  it  is  aggravating,  but  I  cahn't  help  it 
— I  have  got  so  used  to  speaking  nothing  but  French,  my  dear 
Erbare — damme  there  it  goes  again ! — got  so  used  to  French 
pronunciation  that  I  cahn't  get  rid  of  it — it  is  positively  an 
noying,  I  assure  you."  This  entertaining  idiot,  whose  name 
was  Gordon,  allowed  himself  to  be  hailed  three  times  in  the 
street  before  he  paid  any  attention,  and  then  begged  a  thou 
sand  pardons  and  said  he  had  grown  so  accustomed  to  hearing 
himself  addressed  as  M'sieu  Qor-r-dong"  with  a  roll  to  the  r, 
that  he  had  forgotten  the  legitimate 
sound  of  his  name !  He  wore  a  rose 
in  his  button-hole ;  he  gave  the  French 
salutation — two  flips  of  the  hand  in 
front  of  the  face  ;  he  called  Paris  Pair- 
ree  in  ordinary  English  conversation ; 
he  carried  envelopes  bearing  foreign 
postmarks  protruding  from  his  breast 
pocket  ;  he  cultivated  a  moustache  and 
imperial,  and  did  what  else  he  could  to 
suggest  to  the  beholder  his  pet  fancy 
that  he  resembled  Louis  JSTapoleon — 
and  in  a  spirit  of  thankfulness  which  is 
entirely  unaccountable,  considering  the 
slim  foundation  there  was  for  it,  he 
praised  his  Maker  that  he  was  as  he 
was,  and  went  on  enjoying  his  little 
life  just  the  same  as  if  he  really  had 
been  deliberately  designed  and  erected  by  the  great  Architect 
of  the  Universe. 

Think  of  our  Whitcombs,  and  our  Ainsworths  and  our 
Williamses  writing  themselves  down  in  dilapidated  French 
in  foreign  hotel  registers !  We  laugh  at  Englishmen,  when 
we  are  at  home,  for  sticking  so  sturdily  to  their  national  ways 
and  customs,  but  we  look  back  upon  it  from  abroad  very  forgiv 
ingly.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  see  an  American  thrusting  his 
nationality  forward  obtrusively  in  a  foreign  land,  but  Oh,  it  is 


M'SIEU   GOR-R-DONG. 


SEEING     THE     SIGHTS.  235 

pitiable  to  see  him  making  of  himself  a  thing  that  is  neither 
male  nor  female,  neither  fish,  flesh,  nor  fowl — a  poor,  miser 
able,  hermaphrodite  Frenchman ! 

Among  a  long  list  of  churches,  art  galleries,  and  such 
tilings,  visited  by  us  in  Venice,  I  shall  mention  only  one — the 
church  of  Santa  Maria  dei  Frari.  It  is  about  five  hundred 
years  old,  I  believe,  and  stands  on  twelve  hundred  thousand 
piles.  In  it  lie  the  body  of  Canova  and  the  heart  of  Titian, 
under  magnificent  monuments.  Titian  died  at  the  age  of 
almost  one  hundred  years.  A  plague  which  swept  away  fifty 
thousand  lives  was  raging  at  the  time,  and  there  is  notable 
evidence  of  the  reverence  in  which  the  great  painter  was 
held,  in  the  fact  that  to  him  alone  the  state  permitted  a  public 
funeral  in  all  that  season  of  terror  and  death. 

In  this  church,  also,  is  a  monument  to  the  doge  Foscari, 
whose  name  a  once  resident  of  Venice,  Lord  Byron,  has  made 
permanently  famous. 

The  monument  to  the  doge  Giovanni  Pesaro,  in  this  church, 
is  a  curiosity  in  the  way  of  mortuary  adornment.  It  is  eighty 
feet  high  and  is  fronted  like  some  fantastic  pagan  temple. 
Against  it  stand  four  colossal  Nubians,  as  black  as  night, 
dressed  in  white  marble  garments.  The  black  legs  are  bare, 
and  through  rents  in  sleeves  and  breeches,  the  skin,  of 
shiny  black  marble,  shows.  The  artist  was  as  ingenious  as 
his  funeral  designs  were  absurd.  There  are  two  bronze  skele 
tons  bearing  scrolls,  and  two  great  dragons  uphold  the  sar 
cophagus.  On  high,  amid  all  this  grotesqueness,  sits  the  de 
parted  doge. 

In  the  conventual  buildings  attached  to  this  church  are  the 
Btdte  archives  of  Venice.  We  did  not  see  them,  but  they 
are  said  to  number  millions  of  documents.  "  They  are  the 
records  of  centuries  of  the  most  watchful,  observant  and  sus 
picious  government  that  ever  existed — in  which  every  thing 
was  written  down  and  nothing  spoken  out."  They  fill  nearly 
three  hundred  rooms.  Among  them  are  manuscripts  from  the 
archives  of  nearly  two  thousand  families,  monasteries  and 
convents.  The  secret  history  of  Venice  for  a  thousand  years 


236 


SEEING     THE     SIGHTS. 


is  here — its  plots,  its  hidden  trials,  its  assassinations,  its  com 
missions  of  hireling  spies  and  masked  bravoes — food,  ready  to 
hand,  for  a  world  of  dark  and  mysterious  romances. 

Yes,  I  think  we  have  seen  all  of  Venice.  We  have  seen,  in 
these  old  churches,  a  profusion  of  costly  and  elaborate 

sepulchre  ornamentation  such 
as  we  never  dreampt  of  before. 
We  have  stood  in  the  dim  re 
ligious  light  of  these  hoary 
sanctuaries,  in  the  midst  of 
long  ranks  of  dusty  monu 
ments  and  effigies  of  the  great 
dead  of  Venice,  until  we 
seemed  drifting  back,  back, 
back,  into  the  solemn  past, 
and  looking  upon  the  scenes 
and  mingling  with  the  peoples 
of  a  remote  antiquity.  We 
have  been  in  a  half-waking 
sort  of  dream  all  the  time.  I 
do  not  know  how  else  to  de 
scribe  the  feeling.  A  part  of 
our  being  has  remained  still 
in  the  nineteenth  century, 
while  another  part  of  it  has 
seemed  in  some  unaccountable 
way  walking  among  the  phan 
toms  of  the  tenth. 

We  have  seen  famous  pictures  until  our  eyes  are  weary  with 
looking  at  them  and  refuse  to  find  interest  in  them  any  longer. 
And  what  wonder,  when  there  are  twelve  hundred  pictures  by 
Palma  the  Younger  in  Venice  and  fifteen  hundred  by  Tintor 
etto  ?  And  behold  there  are  Titians  and  the  works  of  other 
artists  in  proportion.  We  have  seen  Titian's  celebrated  Cain 
and  Abel,  his  David  and  Goliah,  his  Abraham's  Sacrifice. 
We  have  seen  Tintoretto's  monster  picture,  which  is  seventy- 
four  feet  long  and  I  do  not  know  how  many  feet  high,  and 


MONUMENT    TO   THE   DOGE. 


A     CONFESSION.  237 

thought  it  a  very  commodious  picture.  We  have  seen  pictures 
of  martyrs  enough,  and  saints  enough,  to  regenerate  the 
world.  I  ought  not  to  confess  it,  but  still,  since  one  has  no 
opportunity  in  America  to  acquire  a  critical  judgment  in  art, 
and  since  I  could  not  hope  to  become  educated  in  it  in  Europe 
in  a  few  short  weeks,  I  may  therefore  as  wrell  acknowledge 
with  such  apologies  as  may  be  due,  that  to  me  it  seemed  that 
when  I  had  seen  one  of  these  martyrs  I  had  seen  them  all. 
They  all  have  a  marked  family  resemblance  to  each  other,  they 
dress  alike,  in  coarse  monkish  robes  and  sandals,  they  are  all 
bald  headed,  they  all  stand  in  about  the  same  attitude,  and 
without  exception  they  are  gazing  heavenward  with  counte 
nances  which  the  Ainsworths,  the  Mortons  and  the  Williamses, 
et  fils,  inform  me  are  full  of  "  expression."  To  me  there 
is  nothing  tangible  about  these  imaginary  portraits,  nothing 
that  I  can  grasp  and  take  a  living  interest  in.  If  great  Titian 
had  only  been  gifted  with  prophecy,  and  had  skipped  a  martyr, 
and  gone  over  to  England  and  painted  a  portrait  of  Shaks- 
peare,  even  as  a  youth,  which  we  could  all  have  confidence  in 
now,  the  world  down  to  the  latest  generations  would  have  for 
given  him  the  lost  martyr  in  the  rescued  seer.  I  think  pos 
terity  could  have  spared  one  more  martyr  for  the  sake  of  a 
great  historical  picture  of  Titian's  time  and  painted  by  his 
brush — such  as  Columbus  returning  in  chains  from  the  dis 
covery  of  a  world,  for  instance.  The  old  masters  did  paint 
some  Venetian  historical  pictures,  and  these  we  did  not  tire  of 
looking  at,  notwithstanding  representations  of  the  formal  intro 
duction  of  defunct  doges  to  the  Virgin  Mary  in  regions  beyond 
the  clouds  clashed  rather  harshly  writh  the  proprieties,  it 
seemed  to  us. 

But  humble  as  we  are,  and  unpretending,  in  the  matter  of 
art,  our  researches  among  the  painted  monks  and  martyrs 
have  not  been  wholly  in  vain.  We  have  striven  hard  to  learn. 
We  have  had  some  success.  We  have  mastered  some  things, 
possibly  of  trifling  import  in  the  eyes  of  the  learned,  but  to 
us  they  give  pleasure,  and  we  take  as  much  pride  in  our  little 
acquirements  as  do  others  who  have  learned  far  more,  and  we 


238 


LEARNING     THE     RUDIMENTS. 


ST.   MARK,  BY   THE   OLD   MASTERS. 


love  to  display  them  full  as  well.     When  we  see  a  monk  going 

about  with  a  lion  and  look 
ing  tranquilly  up  to  heaven, 
we  know  that  that  is  St. 
Mark.  When  we  see  a  monk 
with  a  book  and  a  pen,  look 
ing  tranquilly  up  to  heaven, 
trying  to  think  of  a  word,  we 
know  that  that  is  St.  Mat 
thew.  When  we1  see  a  monk 
sitting  on  a  rock,  looking 
tranquilly  up  to  heaven,  with 
a  human  skull  beside  him, 
and  without  other  baggage, 
we  know  that  that  is  St.  Jer 
ome.  Because  we  know  that 
he  always  went  flying  light  in 
the  matter  of  baggage. 
When  we  see  a  party  looking 
tranquilly  up  to  heaven,  un 
conscious  that  his  body  is  shot 
through  and  through  with  ar 
rows,  we  know  that  that  is 
St.  Sebastian.  When  we  see 
other  monks  looking  tranquil 
ly  up  to  heaven,  but  having  no 
trade-mark,  we  always  ask 
who  those  parties  are.  We 
do  this  because  we  humbly 
wish  to  learn.  We  have  seen 
thirteen  thousand  St.  Jeromes, 
and  twenty-two  thousand  St. 
Marks,  and  sixteen  thousand 
St.  Matthews,  and  sixty 
thousand  St.  Sebastians,  and 
four  millions  of  assorted 
monks,  undesignated,  and  we 

ST.   JEROME,    BY   THE    OLD   MASTEBS. 


ST.    MATTHEW,    BY   THE    OLD   MASTERS. 


EXPLANATION. 


239 


larger 


experience,  we 


ST.  SEBASTIAN,  BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS. 


feel  encouraged  to  believe  that  when  we  have  seen  some  more 
of  these  various  pictures,   and  had 
shall  begin  to  take  an  absorbing 
interest   in    them  like  our   cul 
tivated         countrymen        from 
Amerique. 

Xow  it  does  give  me  real  pain 
to  speak  in  this  almost  unappre- 
ciative  way  of  the  old  masters 
and  their  martyrs,  because  good 
friends  of  mine  in  the  ship- 
friends  who  do  thoroughly  and 
conscientiously  appreciate  them 
and  are  in  every  way  competent 
to  discriminate  between  good 
pictures  and  inferior  ones — have 
urged  me  for  my  own  sake  not 
to  make  public  the  fact  that  I 
lack  this  appreciation  and  this 
critical  discrimination  myself. 
I  believe  that  what  I  have  writ 
ten  and  may  still  write  about 
pictures  will  give  them  pain,  and 
I  am  honestly  sorry  for  it.  I 
even  promised  that  I  would 
hide  my  uncouth  sentiments  in 
my  own  breast.  But  alas!  I 
never  could  keep  a  promise.  I 
do  not  blame  myself  for  this 
weakness,  because  the  fault 

must  lie  in  my  physical  organization.  It  is  likely  that  such  a 
very  liberal  amount  of  space  was  given  to  the  organ  which 
enables  me  to  make  promises,  that  the  organ  which  should 
enable  me  to  keep  them  was  crowded  out.  But  I  grieve  not. 
I  like  no  half-way  things.  I  had  rather  have  one  faculty 
nobly  developed  than  two  faculties  of  mere  ordinary  capacity. 
I  certainly  meant  to  keep  that  promise,  but  I  find  I  can  not  do 


ST.  UNKNOWN,  BY  THE  OLD  MASTERS. 


24:0  THE    "RENAISSANCE"    BOTHER. 

it.  It  is  impossible  to  travel  through  Italy  without  speaking 
of  pictures,  and  can  I  see  them  through  others'  eyes  ? 

If  I  did  not  so  delight  in  the  grand  pictures  that  are  spread 
before  me  every  day  of  my  life  by  that  monarch  of  all  the 
old  masters,  ^Nature,  I  should  come  to  believe,  sometimes,  that 
I  had  in  me  no  appreciation  of  the  beautiful,  whatsoever. 

It  seems  to  me  that  whenever  I  glory  to  think  that  for  once 
I  have  discovered  an  ancient  painting  that  is  beautiful  and 
worthy  of  all  praise,  the  pleasure  it  gives  me  is  an  infallible 
proof  that  it  is  not  a  beautiful  picture  and  not  in  any  wise 
worthy  of  commendation.  This  very  thing  has  occurred 
more  times  than  I  can  mention,  in  Yenice.  In  every  single 
instance  the  guide  has  crushed  out  my  swelling  enthusiasm 
with  the  remark : 

"  It  is  nothing — it  is  of  the  Renaissance" 

I  did  not  know  what  in  the  mischief  the  Renaissance  was, 
and  so  always  I  had  to  simply  say, 

"  Ah  !  so  it  is — I  had  not  observed  it  before." 

I  could  not  bear  to  be  ignorant  before  a  cultivated  negro, 
the  offspring  of  a  South  Carolina  slave.  But  it  occurred  too 
often  for  even  my  self-complacency,  did  that  exasperating  "  It 
is  nothing — it  is  of  the  Renaissance."  I  said  at  last : 

"  Who  is  tins  Renaissance?  Where  did  he  come  from? 
Who  gave  him  permission  to  cram  the  Republic  with  his 
execrable  daubs  ?" 

We  learned,  then,  that  Renaissance  was  not  a  man ;  that 
renaissance  was  a  term  used  to  signify  what  was  at  best  but  an 
imperfect  rejuvenation  of  art.  The  guide  said  that  after 
Titian's  time  and  the  time  of  the  other  great  names  we  had 
grown  so  familiar  with,  high  art  declined ;  then  it  partially 
rose  again — an  inferior  sort  of  painters  sprang  up,  and  these 
shabby  pictures  were  the  work  of  their  hands.  Then  I  said, 
in  my  heat,  that  I  "  wished  to  goodness  high  art  had  declined 
five  hundred  years  sooner."  The  Renaissance  pictures  suit  me 
very  well,  though  sooth  to  say  its  school  were  too  much  given 
to  painting  real  men  and  did  not  indulge  enough  in  martyrs. 

The  guide  I  have  spoken  of  is  the  only  one  we  have  had 


CONTRABAND     GUIDE. 


yet  who  knew  any  thing, 
slave    parents. 
They  came  to 
Venice    while 
he  was  an  in 
fant.     He   has 
grown  up  here. 
He  is  well  ed 
ucated,        lie 
reads,     writes, 
and         speaks 
English,     Ital 
ian,     Spanish, 
and       French, 
with  perfect  fa 
cility  ;      is     a 
worshipper  of 
art   and    thor 
oughly  conver 
sant    with    it; 
knows  the  his 
tory  of  Venice 
by   heart    and 
never  tires   of 
talking  of  her 
illustrious    ca 
reer.  He  dress 
es  better  than 
any   of    us,    I 
think,    and    is 
daintily  polite. 
Negroes       are 
deemed          as 
good  as  white 
people,  in  Ven 
ice,  and  so  this 
man    feels    no 


He  was  born  in  South  Carolina,  of 


242  THE     CONSPIRACY. 

desire  to  go  back  to  his  native  land.  His  judgment  is  cor 
rect. 

I  have  had  another  shave.  I  was  writing  in  our  front  room 
this  afternoon  and  trying  hard  to  keep  my  attention  on  my 
work  and  refrain  from  looking  out  upon  the  canal.  I  was 
resisting  the  soft  influences  of  the  climate  as  well  as  I  could, 
and  endeavoring  to  overcome  the  desire  to  be  indolent  and 
happy.  The  boys  sent  for  a  barber.  They  asked  me  if  I 
would  be  shaved.  I  reminded  them  of  my  tortures  in  Genoa, 
Milan,  Como ;  of  my  declaration  that  I  would  suffer  no  more 
on  Italian  soil.  I  said  "  Not  any  for  me,  if  you  please." 

I  wrote  on.  The  barber  began  on  the  doctor.  I  heard  him 
say: 

"  Dan,  this  is  the  easiest  shave  I  have  had  since  we  left  the 
ship." 

He  said  again,  presently : 

"  Why  Dan,  a  man  could  go  to  sleep  with  this  man  shaving 
him." 

Dan  took  the  chair.     Then  he  said : 

"  "Why  this  is  Titian.     This  is  one  of  the  old  masters." 

I  wrote  on.     Directly  Dan  said : 

"  Doctor,  it  is  perfect  luxury.  The  ship's  barber  isn't  any 
thing  to  him." 

My  rough  beard  was  distressing  me  beyond  measure.  The 
barber  was  rolling  up  his  apparatus.  The  temptation  was  too 
strong.  I  said : 

"  Hold  on,  please.     Shave  me  also." 

I  sat  down  in  the  chair  and  closed  my  eyes.  The  barber 
soaped  my  face,  and  then  took  his  razor  and  gave  me  a  rake 
that  well  nigh  threw  me  into  convulsions.  I  jumped  out  of 
the  chair :  Dan  and  the  doctor  were  both  wiping  blood  off 
their  faces  and  laughing. 

I  said  it  was  a  mean,  disgraceful  fraud. 

They  said  that  the  misery  of  this  shave  had  gone  so  far  beyond 
anything  they  had  ever  experienced  before,  that  they  could  not 
bear  the  idea  of  losing  such  a  chance  of  hearing  a  cordial 
opinion  from  me  on  the  subject. 


MOVING     AGAIN.  243 

It  was  shameful.  But  there  was  no  help  for  it.  The  skin 
ning  was  begun  and  had  to  be  finished.  The  tears  flowed 
with  every  rake,  and  so  did  the  fervent  execrations.  The 
barber  grew  confused,  and  brought  blood  every  time.  I  think 
the  boys  enjoyed  it  better  than  any  thing  they  have  seen  or 
heard  since  they  left  home. 

We  have  seen  the  Campanile,  and  Byron's  house  and  Bal- 
bi's  the  geographer,  and  the  palaces  of  all  the  ancient  dukes 
and  doges  of  Venice,  and  we  have  seen  their  effeminate  de 
scendants  airing  their  nobility  in  fashionable  French  attire 
in  the  Grand  Square  of  St.  Mark,  and  eating  ices  and  drink 
ing  cheap  wines,  instead  of  wearing  gallant  coats  of  mail  and 
destroying  fleets  and  armies  as  their  great  ancestors  did  in  the 
days  of  Venetian  glory.  We  have  seen  no  bravoes  with  pois 
oned  stilettos,  no  masks,  no  wild  carnival ;  but  we  have  seen 
the  ancient  pride  of  Venice,  the  grim  Bronze  Horses  that 
figure  in  a  thousand  legends.  Venice  may  well  cherish  them, 
for  they  are  the  only  horses  she  ever  had.  It  is  said  there  are 
hundreds  of  people  in  this  curious  city  who  never  have  seen  a 
living  horse  in  their  lives.  It  is  entirely  true,  no  doubt. 

And  so,  having  satisfied  ourselves,  we  depart  to-morrow, 
and  leave  the  venerable  Queen  of  the  Republics  to  summon 
her  vanished  ships,  and  marshal  her  shadowy  armies,  and 
know  again  in  dreams  the  pride  of  her  old  renown. 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 

SOME  of  the  Quaker  City's  passengers  had  arrived  in  Yen- 
ice  from  Switzerland  and  other  lands  before  we  left 
there,  and  others  were  expected  every  day.  We  heard  of  no 
casualties  among  them,  and  110  sickness. 

We  were  a  little  fatigued  with  sight  seeing,  and  so  we 
rattled  through  a  good  deal  of  country  by  rail  without  caring 
to  stop.  I  took  few  notes.  I  find  no  mention  of  Bologna  in 
my  memorandum  book,  except  that  we  arrived  there  in  good 
season,  but  saw  none  of  the  sausages  for  which  the  place  is  so 
justly  celebrated. 

Pistoia  awoke  but  a  passing  interest. 

Florence  pleased  us  for  a  while.  I  think  we  appreciated 
the  great  figure  of  David  in  the  grand  square,  and  the  sculp 
tured  group  they  call  the  Rape  of  the  Sabines.  We  wandered 
through  the  endless  collections  of  paintings  and  statues  of  the 
Pitti  and  Ufizzi  galleries,  of  course.  I  make  that  statement 
in  self-defense ;  there  let  it  stop.  I  could  not  rest  under  the  im 
putation  that  I  visited  Florence  and  did  not  traverse  its  weary 
miles  of  picture  galleries.  We  tried  indolently  to  recollect 
something  about  the  Guelphs  and  Ghibelines  and  the  other  his 
torical  cut-throats  whose  quarrels  and  assassinations  make  up 
so  large  a  share  of  Florentine  history,  but  the  subject  was  not 
attractive.  We  had  been  robbed  of  all  the  fine  mountain 
scenery  on  our  little  journey  by  a  system  of  railroading  that 
had  three  miles  of  tunnel  to  a  hundred  yards  of  daylight,  and 
we  were  not  inclined  to  be  sociable  with  Florence.  We  had 
seen  the  spot,  outside  the  city  somewhere,  where  these  people 


TOMB     OF     GALILEO. 


245 


had  allowed  the  bones  of  Galileo  to  rest  in  unconsecrated 
ground  for  an  age  because  his  great  discovery  that  the  world 
turned  around  was  regarded  as  a  damning  heresy  by  the 
church  ;  and  we  know  that  long  after  the  world  had  accepted 
his  theory  and  raised  his  name  high  in  the  list  of  its  great 
men,  they  had  still  let  him  rot  there.  That  we  had  lived  to 
see  his  dust  in  honored  sepulture  in  the  church  of  Santa  Croce 
we  owed  to  a  society  of  literati,  and  not  to  Florence  or  her 
rulers.  We  saw  Dant6's  tomb  in  that  church,  also,  but  we 
were  glad  to  know  that  his  body  was  not  in  it ;  that  the  un 
grateful  city  that  had  exiled  him  and  persecuted  him  would 
give  much  to  have  it  there,  but  need  not  hope  to  ever  secure 
that  high  honor  to  herself.  Medicis  are  good  enough  for  Flor 
ence.  Let  her  plant  Medicis  and  build  grand  monuments 
over  them  to  testify  how  gratefully  she  was  wont  to  lick  the 
hand  that  scourged  her. 


FLORENCE. 


Magnanimous  Florence !  Her  jewrelry  marts  are  filled 
with  artists  in  mosaic.  Florentine  mosaics  are  the  choicest  in 
all  the  world.  Florence  loves  to  have  that  said.  Florence  is 


246 


DAZZLING     GENEROSITY. 


proud  of  it.  Florence  would  foster  this  specialty  of  hers. 
She  is  grateful  to  the  artists  that  bring  to  her  this  high  credit 
and  fill  her  coffers  with  foreign  money,  and  so  she  encourages 
them  with  pensions.  "With  pensions !  Think  of  the  lavish- 
ness  of  it.  She  knows  that 
people  who  piece  together 
the  beautiful  trifles  die 
early,  because  the  labor  is 
so  confining,  and  so  ex 
hausting  to  hand  and  brain, 
and  so  she  has  decreed  that 
all  these  people  who  reach 
the  age  of  sixty  shall  have 
a  pension  after  that !  I 
have  not  heard  that  any  of 
them  have  called  for  their 
dividends  yet.  One  man 
did  fight  along  till  he  was 
sixty,  and  started  after  his 
pension,  but  it  appeared 
that  there  had  been  a  mis 
take  of  a  year  in  his  fam 
ily  record,  and  so  he  gave 
it  up  and  died. 

These  artists  will  take  particles  of  stone  or  glass  no  larger 
than  a  mustard  seed,  and  piece  them  together  on  a  sleeve  but 
ton  or  a  shirt  stud,  so  smoothly  and  with  such  nice  adjust 
ment  of  the  delicate  shades  of  color  the  pieces  bear,  as  to 
form  a  pigmy  rose  with  stem,  thorn,  leaves,  petals  complete, 
and  all  as  softly  and  as  truthfully  tinted  as  though  Nature  had 
builded  it  herself.  They  will  counterfeit  a  fly,  or  a  high- 
toned  bug,  or  the  ruined  Coliseum,  within  the  cramped  circle 
of  a  breastpin,  and  do  it  so  deftly  and  so  neatly  that  any  man 
might  think  a  master  painted  it. 

I  saw  a  little  table  in  the  great  mosaic  school  in  Florence — 
a  little  trifle  of  a  centre  table — whose  top  was  made  of  some 
sort  of  precious  polished  stone,  and  in  the  stone  was  inlaid  the 


THE   PENSIONER. 


WONDERFUL     MOSAICS.  24:7 

figure  of  a  flute,  with  bell-mouth  and  a  mazy  complication  of 
keys.  No  painting  in  the  world  could  have  been  softer  or 
richer ;  no  shading  out  of  one  tint  into  another  could  have 
been  more  perfect;  no  work  of  art  of  any  kind  could  have 
been  more  faultless  than  this  flute,  and  yet  to  count  the  multi 
tude  of  little  fragments  of  stone  of  which  they  swore  it  was 
formed  would  bankrupt  any  man's  arithmetic !  I  do  not 
think  one  could  have  seen  where  two  particles  joined  each 
other  with  eyes  of  ordinary  shrewdness.  Certainly  we  could 
detect  no  such  blemish.  This  table-top  cost  the  labor  of  one 
man  for  ten  long  years,  so  they  said,  and  it  was  for  sale  for 
thirty-five  thousand  dollars. 

We  went  to  the  Church  of  Santa  Croce,  from  time  to  time, 
in  Florence,  to  weep  over  the  tombs  of  Michael  Angelo, 
Raphael  and  Machiavelli,  (I  'suppose  they  are  buried  there, 
but  it  may  be  that  they  reside  elsewhere  and  rent  their  tombs 
to  other  parties — such  being  the  fashion  in  Italy,)  and  between 
times  we  used  to  go  and  stand  on  the  bridges  and  admire  the 
Arno.  It  is  popular  to  admire  the  Arno.  It  is  a  great  his 
torical  creek  with  four  feet  in  the  channel  and  some  scows 
floating  around.  It  would  be  a  very  plausible  river  if  they 
would  pump  some  water  into  it.  They  all  call  it  a  river,  and 
they  honestly  think  it  is  a  river,  do  these  dark  and  bloody 
Florentines.  They  even  help  out  the  delusion  by  building 
bridges  over  it.  I  do  not  see  why  they  are  too  good  to 
wade. 

How  the  fatigues  and  annoyances  of  travel  fill  one  with 
bitter  prejudices  sometimes !  I  might  enter  Florence  under 
happier  auspices  a  month  hence  and  find  it  all  beautiful,  all 
attractive.  But  I  do  not  care  to  think  of  it  now,  at  all,  nor 
of  its  roomy  shops  filled  to  the  ceiling  with  snowy  marble  and 
alabaster  copies  of  all  the  celebrated  sculptures  in  Europe — 
copies  so  enchanting  to  the  eye  that  I  wonder  how  they  can 
really  be  shaped  like  the  dingy  petrified  nightmares  they  are 
the  portraits  of.  I  got  lost  in  Florence  at  nine  o'clock,  one 
night,  and  staid  lost  in  that  labyrinth  of  narrow  streets  and 
long  rows  of  vast  buildings  that  look  all  alike,  until  toward 


218 


LOST     AGAIN. 


three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  It  was  a  pleasant  night  and  at 
first  there  were  a  good  many  people  abroad,  and  there  were 
cheerful  lights  about.  Later,  I  grew  accustomed  to  prowling 
about  mysterious  drifts  and  tunnels  and  astonishing  and  inter 
esting  myself  with  coming  around  corners  expecting  to  find 
the  hotel  staring  me  in  the  face,  and  not  finding  it  doing  any 
thins;  of  the  kind.  Later  still,  I  felt  tired.  I  soon  felt  re- 

^j1 

markably  tired.  But  there  was  no  one  abroad,  now — not  even 
a  policeman.  I  walked  till  I  was  out  of  all  patience,  and  very 
hot  and  thirsty.  At  last,  somewhere  after  one  o'clock,  I 
came  unexpectedly  to  one  of  the  city  gates.  I  knew  then  that 
I  was  very  far  from  the  hotel.  The  soldiers  thought  I  wanted 
to  leave  the  city,  and  they  sprang  up  and  barred  the  way  with 
their  muskets.  I  said  : 


I  WANT   TO   GO   HOME. 


"  Hotel  d'Europe!" 

It  was  all  the  Italian  I  knew,  and  I  was  not  certain  whether 
that  was  Italian  or  French.     The  soldiers  looked  stupidly  at 


BY     ACCIDENT.  219 

each  other  and  at  me,  and  shook  their  heads  and  took  me  into 
custody.  I  said  I  wanted  to  go  home.  They  did  not  under 
stand  me.  They  took  me  into  the  guard-house  and  searched 
me,  but  they  found  no  sedition  on  me.  They  found  a  small 
piece  of  soap  (we  carry  soap  with  us,  now,)  and  I  made  them 
a  present  of  it,  seeing  that  they  regarded  it  as  a  curiosity.  I 
continued  to  say  Hotel  d'Europe,  and  they  continued  to  shako 
their  heads,  until  at  last  a  young  soldier  nodding  in  the  cor 
ner  roused  up  and  said  something.  He  said  he  knew  where 
the  hotel  was,  I  suppose,  for  the  officer  of  the  guard  sent  him 
away  with  me.  We  walked  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty 
miles,  it  appeared  to  me,  and  then  he  got  lost.  He  turned 
this  way  and  that,  and  finally  gave  it  up  and  signified  that  he 
was  going  to  spend  the  remainder  of  the  morning  trying  to 
find  the  city  gate  again.  At  that  moment  it  struck  me  that 
there  was  something  familiar  about  the  house  over  the  way. 
It  was  the  hotel ! 

It  was  a  happy  thing  for  me  that  there  happened  to  be  a 
soldier  there  that  knew  even  as  much  as  he  did ;  for  they  say 
that  the  policy  of  the  government  is  to  change  the  soldiery 
from  one  place  to  another  constantly  and  from  country  to 
city,  so  that  they  can  not  become  acquainted  with  the  people 
and  growr  lax  in  their  duties  and  enter  into  plots  and  conspir 
acies  with  friends.  My  experiences  of  Florence  were  chiefly 
unpleasant.  I  will  change  the  subject. 

At  Pisa  we  climbed  up  to  the  top  of  the  strangest  structure 
the  world  has  any  knowledge  of — the  Leaning  Tower.  As 
every  one  knows,  it  is  in  the  neighborhood  of  one  hundred 
and  eighty  feet  high — and  I  beg  to  observe  that  one  hundred 
and  eighty  feet  reach  to  about  the  Light  of  four  ordinary  three- 
story  buildings  piled  one  on  top  of  the  other,  and  is  a  very 
considerable  altitude  for  a  tower  of  uniform  thickness  to  aspire 
to,  even  when  it  stands  upright — yet  this  one  leans  more  than 
thirteen  feet  out  of  the  perpendicular.  It  is  seven  hundred 
years  old,  but  neither  history  or  tradition  say  whether  it  was 
built  as  it  is,  purposely,  or  whether  one  of  its  sides  has  settled. 
There  is  no  record  that  it  ever  stoud  straight  up.  It  is  built 


THE     LEANING     TOWER     OF     PISA. 

of  marble.     It  is  an  airy  and  a  beautiful  structure,  and  each 
of  its  eight  stories  is  encircled  by  fluted  columns,  some  of 


LEANING   TOWER. 


marble  and  some  of  granite,  with  Corinthian  capitals  that 
were  handsome  when  they  were  new.  It  is  a  bell  tower,  and 
in  its  top  hangs  a  chime  of  ancient  bells.  The  winding  stair 
case  within  is  dark,  but  one  always  knows  which  side  of  the 
tower  he  is  on  because  of  his  naturally  gravitating  from  one 
side  to  the  other  of  the  staircase  with  the  rise  or  dip  of  the 
tower.  Some  of  the  stone  steps  are  foot-worn  only  on  one 
end  ;  others  only  on  the  other  end  ;  others  only  in  the  middle. 
To  look  down  into  the  tower  from  the  top  is  like  looking 
down  into  a  tilted  well.  A  rope  that  hangs  from  the  centre 


THE     ANCIENT     DUOMO.  251 

of  the  top  touches  the  wall  before  it  reaches  the  bottom.  Stand 
ing  on  the  summit,  one  does  not  feel  altogether  comfortable 
when  he  looks  down  from  the  high  side ;  but  to  crawl  on  your 
breast  to  the  verge  on  the  lower  side  and  try  to  stretch  your 
neck  out  far  enough  to  see  the  base  of  the  tower,  makes  your 
flesh  creep,  and  convinces  you  for  a  single  moment  in  spite  of 
all  your  philosophy,  that  the  building  is  falling.  You  handle 
yourself  very  carefully,  all  the  time,  under  the  silly  impres 
sion  that  if  it  is  not  falling,  your  trifling  weight  will  start  it 
unless  you  are  particular  not  to  "  bear  down  "  on  it. 

The  Duomo,  close  at  hand,  is  one  of  the  finest  cathedrals  in 
Europe.  It  is  eight  hundred  years  old.  Its  grandeur  has  out 
lived  the  high  commercial  prosperity  and  the  political  import 
ance  that  made  it  a  necessity,  or  rather  a  possibility.  Sur 
rounded  by  poverty,  decay  and  ruin,  it  conveys  to  us  a  more 
tangible  impression  of  the  former  greatness  of  Pisa  than  books 
could  give  us. 

The  Baptistery,  which  is  a  few  years  older  than  the  Leaning 
Tower,  is  a  stately  rotunda,  of  huge  dimensions,  and  was  a 
costly  structure.  In  it  hangs  the  lamp  whose  measured  swing 
suggested  to  Galileo  the  pendulum.  It  looked  an  insignifi 
cant  thing  to  have  conferred  upon  the  -world  of  science  and 
mechanics  such  a  mighty  extension  of  their  dominions  as  it 
has.  Pondering,  in  its  suggestive  presence,  I  seemed  to  see  a 
crazy  universe  of  swinging  disks,  the  toiling  children  of  this 
sedate  parent.  He  appeared  to  have  an  intelligent  expression 
about  him  of  knowing  that  he  was  not  a  lamp  at  all ;  that  he 
was  a  Pendulum ;  a  pendulum  disguised,  for  prodigious  and 
inscrutable  purposes  of  his  own  deep  devising,  and  not  a  com 
mon  pendulum  either,  but  the  old  original  patriarchal  Pendu 
lum — the  Abraham  Pendulum  of  the  world. 

This  Baptistery  is  endowed  with  the  most  pleasing  echo  of 
all  the  echoes  wre  have  read  of.  The  guide  sounded  two  so 
norous  notes,  about  half  an  octave  apart ;  the  echo  answered 
with  the  most  enchanting,  the  most  melodious,  the  richest 
blending  of  sweet  sounds  that  one  can  imagine.  It  was  like 
a  long-drawn  chord  of  a  church  organ,  infinitely  softened  by 


252  A     NEW     HOLY     SEPULCHRE. 

distance.  I  may  be  extravagant  in  this  matter,  but  if  this  be 
the  case  my  ear  is  to  blame — not  my  pen.  I  am  describing  a 
memory — and  one  that  will  remain  long  with  me. 

The  peculiar  devotional  spirit  of  the  olden  time,  which 
placed  a  higher  confidence  in  outward  forms  of  worship  than 
in  the  watchful  guarding  of  tke  heart  against  sinful  thoughts 
and  the  hands  against  sinful  deeds,  and  which  believed  in  the 
protecting  virtues  of  inanimate  objects  made  holy  by  contact 
with  holy  things,  is  illustrated  in  a  striking  manner  in  one  of 
the  cemeteries  of  Pisa.  The  tombs  are  set  in  soil  brought 
in  ships  from  the  Holy  Land  ages  ago.  To  be  buried  in  such 
ground  was  regarded  by  the  ancient  Pisans  as  being  more 
potent  for  salvation  than  many  masses  purchased  of  the 
church  and  the  vowing  of  many  candles  to  the  Virgin. 

Pisa  is  believed  to  be  about  three  thousand  years  old.  It 
was  one  of  the  twelve  great  cities  of  ancient  Etruria,  that 
commonwealth  which  has  left  so  many  monuments  in  testi 
mony  of  its  extraordinary  advancement,  and  so  little  history 
of  itself  that  is  tangible  and  comprehensible.  A  Pisan  anti 
quarian  gave  me  an  ancient  tear-jug  which  he  averred  was  full 
four  thousand  years  old.  It  was  found  among  the  ruins  of 
one  of  the  oldest  of  the  Etruscan  cities.  He  said  it  came  from 
a  tomb,  and  Avas  used  by  some  bereaved  family  in  that  remote 
age  when  even  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt  were  young,  Damas 
cus  a  village,  Abraham  a  prattling  infant  and  ancient  Troy 
not  yet  dreampt  of,  to  receive  the  tears  wept  for  some  lost  idol 
of  a  household.  It  spoke  to  us  in  a  language  of  its  own  ;  and 
with  a  pathos  more  tender  than  any  words  might  bring,  its 
mute  eloquence  swept  down  the  long  roll  of  the  centuries 
with  its  tale  of  a  vacant  chair,  a  familiar  footstep  missed  from 
the  threshold,  a  pleasant  voice  gone  from  the  chorus,  a  van 
ished  form  ! — a  tale  which'  is  always  so  new  to  us,  so  startling, 
so  terrible,  so  benumbing  to  the  senses,  and  behold  how 
threadbare  and  old  it  is !  No  shrewdly-worded  history  could 
have  brought  the  myths  and  shadows  of  that  old  drea.r.y  age 
before  us  clothed  with  human  flesh  and  warmed  with  human 
sympathies  so  vividly  as  did  this  poor  little  unsentient  vessel 
of  pottery. 


A     FALLEN     REPUBLIC.  253 

Pisa  was  a  republic  in  the  middle  ages?  with  a  government 
of  her  own,  armies  and  navies  of  her  own  and  a  great  com 
merce.  She  was  a  warlike  power,  and  inscribed  upon  her 
banners  many  a  brilliant  fight  with  Genoese  and  Turks.  It 
is  said  that  the  city  once  numbered  a  population  of  four  hun 
dred  thousand ;  but  her  sceptre  has  passed  from  her  grasp, 
now,  her  ships  and  her  armies  are  gone,  her  commerce  is  dead. 
Her  battle-nags  bear  the  mold  and  the  dust  of  centuries, 
her  marts  are  deserted,  she  has  shrunken  far  within  her 
crumbling  walls,  and  her  great  population  has  diminished  to 
twenty  thousand  souls.  She  has  but  one  thing  left  to  boast 
of,  and  that  is  not  much,  viz :  she  is  the  second  city  of  Tus 
cany. 

We  reached  Leghorn  in  time  to  see  all  we  wished  to  see  of 
it  long  before  the  city  gates  were  closed  for  the  evening,  and 
then  came  on  board  the  ship. 

We  felt  as  though  we  had  been  away  from  home  an  age.  ^VVe 
never  entirely  appreciated,  before,  what  a  very  pleasant  den 
our  state-room  is  ;  nor  how  jolly  it  is  to  sit  at  dinner  in  one's 
own  seat  in  one's  own  cabin,  and  hold  familiar  conversation 
with  friends  in  one's  own  language.  Oh,  the  rare  happiness 
of  comprehending  every  single  word  that  is  said,  and  knowing 
that  every  word  one  says  in  return  will  be  understood  as  well ! 
We  would  talk  ourselves  to  death,  now,  only  there  are  only 
about  ten  passengers  out  of  the  sixty-five  to  talk  to.  The 
others  are  wandering,  we  hardly  know  where.  We  shall  not 
iro  ashore  in  Leghorn.  We  are  surfeited  with  Italian  cities 

o  O 

for  the  present,  and  much  prefer  to  walk  the  familiar  quarter 
deck  and  view  this  one  from  a  distance. 

The  stupid  magnates  of  this  Leghorn  government  can  not 
understand  that  so  large  a  steamer  as  ours  could  cross  the 
broad  Atlantic  with  no  other  purpose  than  to  indulge  a  party 
of  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  a  pleasure  excursion.  It  looks  too 
improbable.  It  is  suspicious,  they  think.  Something  more 
important  must  be  hidden  behind  it  all.  They  can  not  under 
stand  it,  and  they  scorn  the  evidence  of  the  ship's  papers. 
They  have  decided  at  last  that  we  are  a  battalion  of  incen- 


254  THREATS     OF     QUARANTINE. 

diary,  blood-thirsty  Garibaldians  in  disguise!  And  in  all 
seriousness  they  have  set  a  gun-boat  to  watch  the  vessel  night 
and  day,  with  orders  to  close  down  on  any  revolutionary 
movement  in  a  twinkling !  Police  boats  are  on  patrol  duty 
about  us  all  the  time,  and  it  is  as  much  as  a  sailor's  liberty  is 
worth  to  show  himself  in  a  red  shirt.  These  policemen  fol 
low  the  executive  officer's  boat  from  shore  to  ship  and  from 
ship  to  shore  and  watch  his  dark  maneuvres  with  a  vigilant 
eye.  They  will  arrest  him  yet  unless  he  assumes  an  expres 
sion  of  countenance  that  shall  have  less  of  carnage,  insurrec 
tion  and  sedition  in  it.  A  visit  paid  in  a  friendly  way  to 
General  Garibaldi  yesterday  (by  cordial  invitation,)  by  some  of 
our  passengers,  has  gone  far  to  confirm  the  dread  suspicions 
the  government  harbors  toward  us.  It  is  thought  the  friendly 
visit  was  only  the  cloak  of  a  bloody  conspiracy.  These  people 
draw  near  and  watch  us  when  we  bathe  in  the  sea  from  the 
shut's  side.  Do  they  think  we  are  communing  with  a  reserve 
force  of  rascals  at  the  bottom  ? 

It  is  said  that  we  shall  probably  be  quarantined  at  Naples. 
Two  or  three  of  us  prefer  not  to  run  this  risk.  Therefore, 
when  we  are  rested,  we  propose  to  go  in  a  French  steamer  to 
Civita  Yecchia,  and  from  thence  to  Rome,  and  by  rail  to 
Naples.  They  do  not  quarantine  the  cars,  no  matter  where 
they  got  their  passengers  from. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 


are  a  good  many  things  about  this  Italy  which  I 
do  not  understand  —  and  more  especially  I  can  not  under 
stand  how  a  bankrupt  Government  can  have  such  palatial 
railroad  depots  and  such  marvels  of  turnpikes.  Why,  these 
latter  are  as  hard  as  adamant,  as  straight  as  a  line,  as  smooth 
as  a  floor,  and  as  white  as  snow.  When  it  is  too  dark  to  see 
any  other  object,  one  can  still  see  the  white  turnpikes  of 
France  and  Italy  ;  and  they  are  clean  enough  to  eat  from, 
without  a  table-cloth.  And  yet  no.  tolls  are  charged. 

As  for  the  railways  —  we  have  none  like  them.  The  cars 
slide  as  smoothly  along  as  if  they  were  on  runners.  The 
depots  are  vast  palaces  of  cut  marble,  with  stately  colonnades 
of  the  same  royal  stone  traversing  them  from  end  to  end,  and 
writh  ample  wralls  and  ceilings  richly  decorated  with  frescoes. 
The  lofty  gateways  are  graced  with  statues,  and  the  broad 
floors  are  all  laid  in  polished  flags  of  marble. 

These  things  win  me  more  than  Italy's  hundred  galleries  of 
priceless  art  treasures,  because  I  can  understand  the  one  and 
am  not  competent  to  appreciate  the  other.  In  the  turnpikes, 
the  railways,  the  depots,  and  the  new  boulevards  of  uniform 
houses  in  Florence  and  other  cities  here,  I  see  the  genius  of 
Louis  Napoleon,  or  rather,  I  see  the  works  of  that  statesman 
imitated.  But  Louis  has  taken  care  that  in  France  there  shall 
be  a  foundation  for  these  improvements  —  money.  He  has 
always  the  wherewithal  to  back  up  his  projects  ;  they  strengthen 
France  and  never  weaken  her.  Her  material  prosperity  is 
genuine.  But  here  the  case  is  different.  This  country  is 


256  THE     WORKS     OF     BANKRUPTCY. 

bankrupt.  There  is  no  real  foundation  for  these  great  works. 
The  prosperity  they  would  seem  to  indicate  is  a  pretence. 
There  is  no  money  in  the  treasury,  and  so  they  enfeeble  her 
instead  of  strengthening.  Italy  has  achieved  the  dearest  wisli 
of  her  heart  and  become  an  independent  State — and  in  so  doing 
she  has  drawn  an  elephant  in  the  political  lottery.  She  has 
nothing  to  feed  it  on.  Inexperienced  in  government,  she 
plunged  into  all  manner  of  useless  expenditure,  and  swamped 
her  treasury  almost  in  a  day.  She  squandered  millions  of 
francs  on  a  navy  which  she  did  not  need,  and  the  first  time 
she  took  her  new  toy  into  action  she  got  it  knocked  higher 
than  Gilderoy's  kite — to  use  the  language  of  the  Pilgrims. 

But  it  is  an  ill-wind  that  blows  nobody  good.  A  year  ago, 
when  Italy  saw  utter  ruin  staring  her  in  the  face  and  her 
greenbacks  hardly  worth  the  paper  they  were  printed  on,  her 
Parliament  ventured  upon  a  coup  de  main  that  would  have 
appalled  the  stoutest  of  her  statesmen  under  less  desperate  cir 
cumstances.  They,  in  a  manner,  confiscated  the  domains  of 
the  Church !  This  in  priest-ridden  Italy !  This  in  a  land 
which  has  groped  in  the  midnight  of  priestly  superstition  for 
sixteen  hundred  years  !  It  was  a  rare  good  fortune  for  Italy, 
the  stress  of  weather  that  drove  her  to  break  from  this  prison- 
house. 

They  do  not  call  it  confiscating  the  church  property.  That 
would  sound  too  harshly  yet.  But  it  amounts  to  that.  There 
are  thousands  of  churches  in  Italy,  each  with  untold  millions 
of  treasures  stored  away  in  its  closets,  and  each  with  its  bat 
talion  of  priests  to  be  supported.  And  then  there  are  the 
estates  of  the  Church — league  on  league  of  the  richest  lands 
and  the  noblest  forests  in  all  Italy — all  yielding  immense  rev 
enues  to  the  Church,  and  none  paying  a  cent  in  taxes  to  the 
State.  In  some  great  districts  the  Church  owns  all  the  prop 
erty — lands,  watercourses,  woods,  mills  and  factories.  They 
buy,  they  sell,  they  manufacture,  and  since  they  pay  no  taxes, 
who  can  hope  to  compete  with  them  ? 

Well,  the  Government  has  seized  all  this  in  effect,  and  will 
yet  seize  it  in  rigid  and  unpoetical  reality,  no  doubt.  Some- 


ECCLESIASTICAL     SPLENDOR.  257 

thing  must  be  done  to  feed  a  starving  treasury,  and  there  is  no 
other  resource  in  all  Italy — none  but  the  riches  of  the  Church. 
So  the  Government  intends  to  take  to  itself  a  great  portion  of 
the  revenues  arising  from  priestly  farms,  factories,  etc.,  and 
also  intends  to  take  possession  of  the  churches  and  carry  them 
on,  after  its  own  fashion  and  upon  its  own  responsibility.  In 
a  few  instances  it  will  leave  the  establishments  of  great  pet 
churches  undisturbed,  but  in  all  others  only  a  handful  of 
priests  will  be  retained  to  preach  and  pray,  a  few  will  be  pen 
sioned,  and  the  balance  turned  adrift. 

Pray  glance  at  some  of  these  churches  and  their  embellish 
ments,  and  see  whether  the  Government  is  doing  a  righteous 
thing  or  not.  In  Venice,  to-day,  a  city  of  a  hundred  thousand 
inhabitants,  there  are  twelve  hundred  priests.  Heaven  only 
knows  how  many  there  were  before  the  Parliament  reduced  their 
numbers.  There  was  the  great  Jesuit  Church.  Under  the  old 
regime  it  required  sixty  priests  to  engineer  it — the  Govern 
ment  does  it  with  five,  now,  and  the  others  are  discharged 
from  service.  All  about  that  church  wretchedness  and  poverty 
abound.  At  its  door  a  dozen  hats  and  bonnets  were  doffed  to 
us,  as  many  heads  were  humbly  bowed,  and  as  many  hands  ex 
tended,  appealing  for  pennies — appealing  with  foreign  words 
we  could  not  understand,  but  appealing  mutely,  with  sad  eyes, 
and  sunken  cheeks,  and  ragged  raiment,  that  no  wovds  were 
needed  to  translate.  Then  we  passed  within  the  great  doors, 
and  it  seemed  that  the  riches  of  the  world  were  before  us ! 
Huge  columns  carved  out  of  single  masses  of  marble,  and 
inlaid  from  top  to  bottom  with  a  hundred  intricate  figures 
wrought  in  costly  verde  antique;  pulpits  of  the  same  rich 
materials,  whose  draperies  hung  down  in  many  a  pictured  fold, 
the  stony  fabric  counterfeiting  the  delicate  work  of  the  loom ; 
the  grand  altar  brilliant  with  polished  facings  and  balustrades 
of  oriental  agate,  jasper,  verde  antique,  and  other  precious 
stones,  whose  names,  even,  we  seldom  hear — and  slabs  of 
priceless  lapis  lazuli  lavished  every  where  as  recklessly  as  if 
the  church  had  owned  a  quarry  of  it.  In  the  midst  of  all  this 
magnificence,  the  solid  gold  and  silver  furniture  of  the  altar. 

17 


258 


MAGNIFICENCE     AND     MISERY. 


seemed  cheap  and  trivial.  Even  the  floors  and  ceilings  cost  a 
princely  fortune. 

Now,  where  is  the  use  of  allowing  all  those  riches  to  lie  idle, 
while  half  of  that  community  hardly  know,  from  day  to  day, 
how  they  are  going  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  1  And, 
where  is  the  wisdom  in  permitting  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of 
millions  of  francs  to  be  locked  up  in  the  useless  trumpery  of 
churches  all  over  Italy,  and  the  people  ground  to  death  with 
taxation  to  uphold  a  perishing  Government  ? 

As  far  as  I  can  see,  Italy,  for  fifteen  hundred  years,  has 
turned  all  her  energies,  all  her  finances,  and  all  her  industry 
to  the  building  up  of  a  vast  array  of  wonderful  church  edifices, 
and  starving  half  her  citizens  to  accomplish  it.  She  is  to-day 
one  vast  museum  of  magnificence  and  misery.  All  the 
churches  in  an  ordinary  American  city  put  together  could 
hardly  buy  the  jeweled  frippery  in  one  of  her  hundred  cathe 
drals.  And  for  every  beggar  in  America,  Italy  can  show  a 


THE   CONTRAST. 


hundred — and  rags  and  vermin  to  match.     It  is  the  wretched- 
est,  princeliest  land  on  earth. 
.Look  at  .the  grand  Duomo  of  Florence — a  vast  pile  that  has 


GENERAL     EXECRATION.  259 

been  sapping  the  purses  of  her  citizens  for  five  hundred  years, 
and  is  not  nearly  finished  yet.  Like  all  other  men,  I  fell  down 
and  worshipped  it,  but  when  the  filthy  beggars  swarmed 
around  me  the  contrast  wras  too  striking,  too  suggestive,  and  I 
said,  "  O,  sons  of  classic  Italy,  is  the  spirit  of  enterprise,  of 
self-reliance,  of  noble  endeavor,  utterly  dead  within  ye  ?  Curse 
your  indolent  worthlessness,  why  don't  you  rob  your  church  ?" 

Three  hundred  happy,  comfortable  priests  are  employed  in 
that  Cathedral. 

And  now  that  my  temper  is  up,  I  may  as  well  go  on  and 
abuse  every  body  I  can  think  of.  They  have  a  grand  mausoleum 
in  Florence,  which  they  built  to  bury  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
and  the  Medici  family  in.  It  sounds  blasphemous,  but  it  is 
true,  and  here  they  act  blasphemy.  The  dead  and  damned 
Medicis  who  cruelly  tyrannized  over  Florence  and  were  her 
curse  for  over  two  hundred  years,  are  salted  away  in  a  circle 
of  costly  vaults,  and  in  their  midst  the  Holy  Sepulchre  was  to 
have  been  set  up.  The  expedition  sent  to  Jerusalem  to  seize 
it  got  into  trouble  and  could  not  accomplish  the  burglary,  and 
so  the  centre  of  the  mausoleum  is  vacant  now.  They  say  the 
entire  mausoleum  was  intended  for  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and 
was  only  turned  into  a  family  burying  place  after  the  Jeru 
salem  expedition  failed — but  you  will  excuse  me.  Some  of 
those  Medicis  would  have  smuggled  themselves  in  sure. — 
What  they  had  not  the  effrontery  to  do,  was  not  worth  doing. 
Why,  they  had  their  trivial,  forgotten  exploits  on  land  and 
sea  pictured  out  in  grand  frescoes  (as  did  also  the  ancient 
Doges  of  Venice)  with  the  Saviour  and  the  Virgin  throwing 
bouquets  to  them  out  of  the  clouds,  and  the  Deity  himself 
applauding  from  his  throne  in  Heaven !  And  who  painted 
these  things?  Why,  Titian,  Tintoretto,  Paul  Veronese, 
Raphael — none  other  than  the  world's  idols,  the  "old  mas 
ters." 

Andrea  del  Sarto  glorified  his  princes  in  pictures  that  must 
save  them  for  ever  from  the  oblivion  they  merited,  and  they  let 
him  starve.  Served  him  right.  Raphael  pictured  such  infernal 
villains  as  Catherine  and  Marie  de  Medicis  seated  in  heaven  and 


260  MORE     MAGNIFICENCE. 

conversing  familiarly  with  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the  angels, 
(to  say  nothing  of  higher  personages,)  and  yet  my  friends 
abuse  me  because  I  am  a  little  prejudiced  against  the  old 
masters — because  I  fail  sometimes  to  see  the  beauty  that  is  in 
their  productions.  I  can  not  help  but  see  it,  now  and  then,  but 
I  keep  on  protesting  against  the  groveling  spirit  that  could 
persuade  those  masters  to  prostitute  their  noble  talents  to  the 
adulation  of  such  monsters  as  the  French,  Venetian  and  Flor 
entine  Princes  of  two  and  three  hundred  years  ago,  all  the 
same. 

I  am  told  that  the  old  masters  had  to  do  these  shameful 
things  for  bread,  the  princes  and  potentates  being  the  only 
patrons  of  art.  If  a  grandly  gifted  man  may  drag  his  pride 
and  his  manhood  in  the  dirt  for  bread  rather  than  starve  with 
the  nobility  that  is  in  him  untainted,  the  excuse  is  a  valid  one. 
It  would  excuse  theft  in  Washingtons  and  Wellingtons,  and 
unchastity  in  women  as  well. 

But  somehow,  I  can  not  keep  that  Medici  mausoleum  out  of 
my  memory.  It  is  as  large  as  a  church ;  its  pavement  is  rich 
enough  for  the  pavement  of  a  King's  palace ;  its  great  dome 
is  gorgeous  with  frescoes ;  its  walls  are  made  of — what  ?  Mar 
ble? — plaster? — wood? — paper?  No.  Eed  porphyry — verde 
antique — jasper — oriental  agate — alabaster — mother-of-pearl — 
chalcedony — red  coral — lapis  lazuli!  All  the  vast  walls  are 
made  wholly  of  these  precious  stones,  worked  in,  and  in  and  in  to 
gether  in  elaborate  patterns  and  figures,  and  polished  till  they 
glow  like  great  mirrors  with  the  pictured  splendors  reflected  from 
the  dome  overhead.  And  before  a  statue  of  one  of  those  dead 
Medicis  reposes  a  crown  that  blazes  with  diamonds  and  emer 
alds  enough  to  buy  a  ship-of-the-line,  almost.  These  are  the 
things  the  Government  has  its  evil  eye  upon,  and  a  happy 
thing  it  will  be  for  Italy  when  they  melt  away  in  the  public 
treasury. 

And  now — .  However,  another  beggar  approaches.  I  will 
go  out  and  destroy  him,  and  then  come  back  and  wTite  another 
chapter  of  vituperation. 

Having  eaten  the  friendless  orphan — having  driven  away  his 


A     GOOD     WORD     FOR     THE     PRIESTS.  261 

comrades — having  grown  calm  and  reflective  at  length — I  now 
feel  in  a  kindlier  mood.  I  feel  that  after  talking  so  freely 
about  the  priests  and  the  churches,  justice  demands  that  if  I 
know  any  thing  good  about  either  I  ought  to  say  it.  I  have 
heard  of  many  things  that  redound  to  the  credit  of  the  priest 
hood,  but  the  most  notable  matter  that  occurs  to  me  now  is 
the  devotion  one  of  the  mendicant  orders  showed  during  the 
prevalence  of  the  cholera  last  year.  I  speak  of  the  Dominican 
friars — men  who  wear  a  coarse,  heavy  brown  robe  and  a  cowl, 
in  this  hot  climate,  and  go  barefoot.  They  live  on  alms  alto 
gether,  I  believe.  They  must  unquestionably  love  their  reli 
gion,  to  suffer  so  much  for  it.  When  the  cholera  was  raging 
in  Naples ;  when  the  people  were  dying  by  hundreds  and  hun 
dreds  every  day ;  when  every  concern  for  the  public  welfare 
was  swallowed  up  in  selfish  private  interest,  and  every  citizen 
made  the  taking  care  of  himself  his  sole  object,  these  men 
banded  themselves  together  and  went  about  nursing  the  sick 
and  burying  the  dead.  Their  noble  efforts  cost  many  of  them 
their  lives.  They  laid  them  down  cheerfully,  and  well  they 
might.  Creeds  mathematically  precise,  and  hair-splitting  nice 
ties  of  doctrine,  are  absolutely  necessary  for  the  salvation  of 
some  kinds  of  souls,  but  surely  the  charity,  the  purity,  the 
unselfishness  that  are  in  the  hearts  of  men  like  these  would 
save  their  souls  though  they  were  bankrupt  in  the  true  religion 
— which  is  ours. 

One  of  these  fat  bare-footed  rascals  came  here  to  Civita  Yec- 
chia  with  us  in  the  little  French  steamer.  There  were  only 
half  a  dozen  of  us  in  the  cabin.  He  belonged  in  the  steerage. 
He  was  the  life  of  the  ship,  the  bloody-minded  son  of  the 
Inquisition !  He  and  the  leader  of  the  marine  band  of  a 
French  man-of-war  played  on  the  piano  and  sang  opera  turn 
about;  they  sang  duets  together;  they  rigged  impromptu 
theatrical  costumes  and  gave  us  extravagant  farces  and  panto 
mimes.  We  got  along  first-rate  with  the  friar,  and  were  exces 
sively  conversational,  albeit  he  could  not  understand  what  we 
said,  and  certainly  he  never  uttered  a  word  that  we  could 
guess  the  meaning  of. 


262  CIVITA     VECCHIA     THE     DISMAL. 

This  Civita  Yeccliia  is  the  finest  nest  of  dirt,  vermin  and 
ignorance  we  have  found  yet,  except  that  African  perdition 
they  call  Tangier,  which  is  just  like  it.  The  people  here  live 
in  alleys  two  yards  wide,  which  have  a  smell  about  them  which 
is  peculiar  but  not  entertaining.  It  is  well  the  alleys  are  not 
wider,  because  they  hold  as  much  smell  now  as  a  person  can 
stand,  and  of  course,  if  they  were  wider  they  would  hold  more, 
and  then  the  people  would  die.  These  alleys  are  paved  with 
stone,  and  carpeted  with  deceased  cats,  and  decayed  rags,  and 
decomposed  vegetable-tops,  and  remnants  of  old  boots,  all 
soaked  with  dish-water,  and  the  people  sit  around  on  stools 
and  enjoy  it.  They  are  indolent,  as  a  general  thing,  and  yet 
have  few  pastimes.  They  work  two  or  three  hours  at  a  time, 
but  not  hard,  and  then  they  knock  off  and  catch  flies.  This 
does  not  require  any  talent,  because  they  only  have  to  grab — 
if  they  do  not  get  the  one  they  are  after,  they  get  another.  It 
is  all  the  same  to  them.  They  have  no  partialities.  Which 
ever  one  they  get  is  the  one  they  want. 

They  have  other  kinds  of  insects,  but  it  does  not  make  them 
arrogant.  They  are  very  quiet,  unpretending  people.  They 
have  more  of  these  kind  of  things  than  other  communities,  but 
they  do  not  boast. 

They  are  very  uncleanly — these  people — in  face,  in  person 
and  dress.  When  they  see  any  body  with  a  clean  shirt  on, 
it  arouses  their  scorn.  The  women  wash  clothes,  half  the  day, 
at  the  public  tanks  in  the  streets,  but  they  are  probably  some 
body  else's.  Or  may  be  they  keep  one  set  to  wear  and  another 
to  wash ;  because  they  never  put  on  any  that  have  ever  been 
washed.  When  they  get  done  washing,  they  sit  in  the  alleys 
and  nurse  their  cubs.  They  nurse  one  ash-cat  at  a  time,  and 
the  others  scratch  their  backs  against  the  door-post  and  are 
happy. 

All  this  country  belongs  to  the  Papal  States.  They  do  not 
appear  to  have  any  schools  here,  and  only  one  billiard  table. 
Their  education  is  at  a  very  low  stage.  One  portion  of  the 
men  go  into  the  military,  another  into  the  priesthood,  and  the 
rest  into  the  shoe-making  business. 


CIVITA     VECCHIA     THE     DISMAL. 


263 


They  keep  up  the  passport  system  here,  but  so  they  do  in 
Turkey.  This  shows  that  the  Papal  States  are  as  far  advanced 
as  Turkey.  This  fact  will  be  alone  sufficient  to  silence  the 


ITALIAN    PASTIMES. 


tongues  of  malignant  calumniators.  I  had  to  get  my  passport 
vised  for  Rome  in  Florence,  and  then  they  would  not  let  me 
come  ashore  here  until  a  policeman  had  examined  it  on  the 
wharf  and  sent  me  a  permit.  They  did  not  even  dare  to  let 
me  take  my  passport  in  my  hands  for  twelve  hours,  I  looked 
so  formidable.  They  judged  it  best  to  let  me  cool  down. 
They  thought  I  wanted  to  take  the  town,  likely.  Little  did 
they  know  me.  I  wouldn't  have  it.  They  examined  my  bag 
gage  at  the  depot.  They  took  one  of  my  ablest  jokes  and 
read  it  over  carefully  twice  and  then  read  it  backwards.  But 
it  was  too  deep  for  them.  They  passed  it  around,  and  every 
body  speculated  on  it  awhile,  but  it  mastered  them  all. 

It  was  no  common  joke.  At  length  a  reteran  officer  spelled 
it  over  deliberately  and  shook  his  head  three  or  four  times  and 
said  that  in  his  opinion  it  was  seditious.  That  was  the  first 
time  I  felt  alarmed.  I  immediately  said  I  would  explain  the 
document,  and  they  crowded  around.  And  so  I  explained  and 


26-i 


CIVITA     VECCHIA     THE     DISMAL. 


explained  and  explained,  and  they  took  notes  of  all  I  said,  but  the 
more  I  explained  the  more  they  could  not  understand  it,  and  when 
they  desisted  at  last,  I  could  not  even  understand  it  myself. 


INCENDIARY   DOCUMENT. 


They  said  they  believed  it  was  an  incendiary  document, 
leveled  at  the  government.  I  declared  solemnly  that  it  was 
not,  but  they  only  shook  their  heads  and  would  not  be  satis 
fied.  Then  they  consulted  a  good  while ;  and  finally  they  con 
fiscated  it.  I  was  very  sorry  for  this,  because  I  had  worked  a 
long  time  on  that  joke,  and  took  a  good  deal  of  pride  in  it, 
and  now  I  suppose  I  shall  never  see  it  any  more.  I  suppose  it 
will  be  sent  up  and  filed  away  among  the  criminal  archives  of 
Rome,  and  will  always  be  regarded  as  a  mysterious  infernal 
machine  which  would  have  blown  up  like  a  mine  and  scattered 
the  good  Pope  all  around,  but  for  a  miraculous  providential 
interference.  And  I  suppose  that  all  the  time  I  am  in  Rome 
the  police  will  dog  me  about  from  place  to  place  because  they 
think  I  am  a  dangerous  character. 


OFF     FOR     ROME.  265 

It  is  fearfully  hot  in  Civita  Yeccliia.  The  streets  are  made 
very  narrow  and  the  houses  built  very  solid  and  heavy  and 
high,  as  a  protection  against  the  heat.  This  is  the  first  Italian 
town  I  have  seen  which  does  not  appear  to  have  a  patron 
saint.  I  suppose  no  saint  but  the  one  that  went  up  in  the 
chariot  of  fire  could  stand  the  climate. 

There  is  nothing  here  to  see.  They  have  not  even  a  cathe 
dral,  with  eleven  tons  of  solid  silver  archbishops  in  the  back 
room;  and  they  do  not  show  you  any  moldy  buildings  that 
are  seven  thousand  years  old ;  nor  any  smoke-dried  old  fire 
screens  which  are  chef  tfceuvres  of  Reubens  or  Simpson,  or 
Titian  or  Ferguson,  or  any  of  those  parties ;  and  they  haven't 
any  bottled  fragments  of  saints,  and  not  even  a  nail  from  the 
true  cross.  We  are  going  to  Home.  There  is  nothing  to  see 
here. 


CHAPTEE   XXVI. 

TTTHAT  is  it  that  confers  the  noblest  delight  ?  What  is 
*  V  that  which  swells  a  man's  breast  with  pride  above  that 
which  any  other  experience  can  bring  to  him  ?  Discovery  !  To 
know  that  you  are  walking  where  none  others  have  walked  ; 
that  you  are  beholding  what  human  eye  has  not  seen  before ; 
that  you  are  breathing  a  virgin  atmosphere.  To  give  birth  to 
an  idea — to  discover  a  great  thought — an  intellectual  nugget, 
right  under  the  dust  of  a  field  that  many  a  brain-plow  had 
gone  over  before.  To  find  a  new  planet,  to  invent  a  new 
hinge,  to  find  the  way  to  make  the  lightnings  carry  your 
messages.  To  be  the  first — that  is  the  idea.  To  do  some 
thing,  say  something,  see  something,  before  any  body  else — 
these  are  the  things  that  confer  a  pleasure  compared  with 
which  other  pleasures  are  tame  and  commonplace,  other  ecsta 
sies  cheap  and  trivial.  Morse,  with  his  first  message,  brought 
by  his  servant,  the  lightning ;  Fulton,  in  that  long-drawn  cen 
tury  of  suspense,  when  he  placed  his  hand  upon  the  throttle- 
valve  and  lo,  the  steamboat  moved ;  Jenner,  when  his  patient 
with  the  cow's  virus  in  his  blood,  walked  through  the  small, 
pox  hospitals  unscathed ;  Howe,  when  the  idea  shot  through 
his  brain  that  for  a  hundred  and  twenty  generations  the  eye 
had  been  bored  through  the  wrong  end  of  the  needle ;  the 
nameless  lord  of  art  who  laid  down  his  chisel  in  some  old  age 
that  is  forgotten,  now,  and  gloated  upon  the  finished  Laocoon ; 
Daguerre,  when  he  commanded  the  sun,  riding  in  the  zenith, 
to  print  the  landscape  upon  his  insignificant  silvered  plate,  and 


THE  MODERN  ROMAN  TRAVELETH. 


267 


he  obeyed ;  Columbus,  in  the  Pinta's  shrouds,  when  he  swung 
his  hat  above  a  fabled  sea  and  gazed  abroad  upon  an  unknown 
world !  These  are  the  men  who  have  really  lived — who  have 
actually  comprehended  what  pleasure  is — who  have  crowded 
long  lifetimes  of  ecstasy  into  a  single  moment. 

What  is  there  in  Home  for  me  to  see  that  others  have  not 
seen  before  me  ?  What  is  there  for  me  to  touch  that  others 
have  not  touched?  What  is  there  for,. me  to  feel,  to  learn,  to 
hear,  to  know,  that  shall  thrill  me  before  it  pass  to  others  ? 
What  can  I  discover  ? — Nothing.  Noth 
ing  whatsoever.  One  charm  of  travel 
dies  here.  But  if  I  were  only  a  Ro 
man  ! — If,  added  to  my  own  I  could  be 
gifted  with  modern  Roman  sloth,  mod 
ern  Roman  superstition,  and  modern 
Roman  boundlessness  of  ignorance, 
what  bewildering  worlds  of  unsus 
pected  wonders  I  would  discover !  Ah, 
if  I  were  only  a  habitant  of  the  Cam- 
pagna  five  and  twenty  miles  from 
Rome  !  Tfien  I  would  travel. 

I  would  go  to  America,  and  see,  and 
learn,  and  return  to  the  Campagna  and 
stand  before  my  countrymen  an  illus 
trious  discoverer.  I  would  say : 

"  I  saw  there  a  country  which  has  no 
overshadowing  Mother  Church,  and  yet 

the  people  survive.  I  saw  a  government  which  never  was 
protected  by  foreign  soldiers  at  a  cost  greater  than  that  re 
quired  to  carry  on  the  government  itself.  I  saw  common  men 
and  common  women  who  could  read ;  I  even  saw  small  chil 
dren  of  common  country  people  reading  from  books ;  if  I  dared 
think  you  would  believe  it,  I  would  say  they  could  write,  also. 
In  the  cities  I  saw  people  drinking  a  delicious  beverage  made 
of  chalk  and  water,  but  never  once  saw  goats  driven  through 
their  Broadway  or  their  Pennsylvania  Avenue  or  their  Mont 
gomery  street  and  milked  at  the  doors  of  the  houses.  I  saw 


ROMAN  OF    1869. 


268  THE     MODERN     ROMAN     TRAVELETH. 

real  glass  windows  in  the  houses  of  even  the  commonest  people. 
Some  of  the  houses  are  not  of  stone,  nor  yet  of  bricks ;  I  sol 
emnly  swear  they  are  made  of  wood.  Houses  there  will  take 
fire  and  burn,  sometimes — actually  burn  entirely  down,  and 
not  leave  a  single  vestige  behind.  I  could  state  that  for  a 
truth,  upon  my  death-bed.  And  as  a  proof  that  the  circum 
stance  is  not  rare,  I  aver  that  they  have  a  thing  which  they 
call  a  fire-engine,  which  vomits  forth  great  streams  of  water, 
and  is  kept  always  in  readiness,  by  night  and  by  day,  to  rush 
to  houses  that  are  burning.  You  would  think  one  engine 
wrould  be  sufficient,  but  some  great  cities  have  a  hundred ; 
they  keep  men  hired,  and  pay  them  by  the  month  to  do  nothing 
but  put  out  fires.  For  a  certain  sum  of  money  other  men  will 
insure  that  your  house  shall  not  burn  down ;  and  if  it  burns 
they  will  pay  you  for  it.  There  are  hundreds  and  thousands 
of  schools,  and  any  body  may  go  and  learn  to  be  wise,  like  a 
priest.  In  that  singular  country  if  a  rich  man  dies  a  sinner,  he 
is  damned ;  he  can  not  buy  salvation  with  money  for  masses. 
There  is  really  not  much  use  in  being  rich,  there.  ISTot  much 
use  as  far  as  the  other  world  is  concerned,  but  much,  very 
much  use,  as  concerns  this ;  because  there,  if  a  man  be  rich,  he 
is  very  greatly  honored,  and  can  become  a  legislator,  a  govern 
or,  a  general,  a  senator,  no  matter  how  ignorant  an  ass  he  is — 
just  as  in  our  beloved  Italy  the  nobles  hold  all  the  great  places, 
even  though  sometimes  they  are  born  noble  idiots.  There,  if 
a  man  be  rich,  they  give  him  costly  presents,  they  ask  him  to 
feasts,  they  invite  him  to  drink  complicated  beverages ;  but  if 
he  be  poor  and  in  debt,  they  require  him  to  do  that  which 
they  term  to  "  settle."  The  women  put  on  a  different  dress 
almost  every  day ;  the  dress  is  usually  fine,  but  absurd  in 
shape ;  the  very  shape  and  fashion  of  it  changes  twice  in  a 
hundred  years ;  and  did  I  but  covet  to  be  called  an  extrava 
gant  falsifier,  I  wrould  say  it  changed  even  oftener.  Hair  does 
not  grow  upon  the  American  women's  heads ;  it  is  made  for 
them  by  cunning  workmen  in  the  shops,  and  is  curled  and 
frizzled  into  scandalous  and  ungodly  forms.  Some  persons 
wear  eyes  of  glass  which  they  see  through  wTith  facility  per- 


THE  MODERN  ROMAN  TRAVELETH.       269 

haps,  else  they  would  not  use  them ;  and  in  the  mouths  of 
some  are  teeth  made  by  the  sacrilegious  hand  of  man.  The 
dress  of  the  men  is  laughably  grotesque.  They  carry  no 
musket  in  ordinary  life,  nor  no  long-pointed  pole ;  they  wear 
no  wide  green-lined  cloak;  they  wear  no  peaked  black  felt 
hat,  no  leathern  gaiters  reaching  to  the  knee,  no  goat-skin 
breeches  with  the  hair  side  out,  no  hob-nailed  shoes,  no  pro 
digious  spurs.  They  wear  a  conical  hat  termed  a  "  nail-kag ;" 
a  coat  of  saddest  black ;  a  shirt  which  shows  dirt  so  easily  that 
it  has  to  be  changed  every  month,  and  is  very  troublesome ; 
things  called  pantaloons,  which  are  held  up  by  shoulder 
straps,  and  on  their  feet  they  wear  boots  which  are  ridiculous 
in  pattern  and  can  stand  no  wear.  Yet  dressed  in  this  fan 
tastic  garb,  these  people  laughed  at  my  costume.  In  that 
country,  books  are  so  common  that  it  is  really  no  curiosity  to 
see  one.  Newspapers  also.  They  have  a  great  machine  which 
prints  such  things  by  thousands  every  hour. 

"  I  saw  common  men,  there — men  who  were  neither  priests 
nor  princes — who  yet  absolutely  owned  the  land  they  tilled.  \J 
It  was  not  rented  from  the  church,  nor  from  the  nobles.  I  am 
ready  to  take  my  oath  of  this.  In  that  country  you  might  fall 
from  a  third  story  window  three  several  times,  and  not  mash 
either  a  soldier  or  a  priest. — The  scarcity  of  such  people  is 
astonishing.  In  the  cities  you  will  see  a  dozen  civilians  for 
every  soldier,  and  as  many  for  every  priest  or  preacher.  Jews, 
there,  are  treated  just  like  human  beings,  instead  of  dogs. 
They  can  work  at  any  business  they  please ;  they  can  sell 
brand  new  goods  if  they  want  to ;  they  can  keep  drug-stores ; 
they  can  practice  medicine  among  Christians ;  they  can  even 
shake  hands  with  Christians  if  they  choose ;  they  can  associate 
with  them,  just  the  same  as  one  human  being  does  with 
another  human  being ;  they  don't  have  to  stay  shut  up  in  one 
corner  of  the  towns ;  they  can  live  in  any  part  of  a  town  they 
like  best ;  it  is  said  they  even  have  the  privilege  of  buying 
land  and  houses,  and  owning  them  themselves,  though  I  doubt 
that,  myself;  they  never  have  had  to  run  races  naked  through 
the  public  streets,  against  jackasses,  to  please  the  people  in 


270       THE  MODERN  ROMAN  TRAVELETH. 

carnival  time;  there  they  never  have  been  driven  by  the 
soldiers  into  a  church  every  Sunday  for  hundreds  of  years  to 
hear  themselves  and  their  religion  especially  and  particularly 
cursed ;  at  this  very  day,  in  that  curious  country,  a  Jew  is 
allowed  to  vote,  hold  office,  yea,  get  up  on  a  rostrum  in  the 
public  street  and  express  his  opinion  of  the  government  if  the 
government  don't  suit  him  !  Ah,  it  is  wonderful.  The  com 
mon  people  there  know  a  great  deal;  they  even  have  the 
effrontery  to  complain  if  they  are  not  properly  governed,  and 
to  take  hold  and  help  conduct  the  government  themselves ;  if 
they  had  laws  like  ours,  which  give  one  dollar  of  every  three  a 
crop  produces  to  the  government  for  taxes,  they  would  have 
that  law  altered:  instead  of  paying  thirty-three  dollars  in 
taxes,  out  of  every  one  hundred  they  receive,  they  complain  if 
they  have  to  pay  seven.  They  are  curious  people.  They  do 
not  know  when  they  are  well  oif.  Mendicant  priests  do  not 
prowl  among  them  with  baskets  begging  for  the  church  and 
eating  up  their  substance.  One  hardly  ever  sees  a  minister  of 
the  gospel  going  around  there  in  his  bare  feet,  with  a  basket, 
begging  for  subsistence.  In  that  country  the  preachers  are  not 
like  our  mendicant  orders  of  friars — they  have  two  or  three 
suits  of  clothing,  and  they  wash  sometimes.  In  that  land  are 
mountains  far  higher  than  the  Alban  mountains ;  the  vast 
Roman  Campagna,  a  hundred  miles  long  and  full  forty  broad, 
is  really  small  compared  to  the  United  States  of  America ;  the 
Tiber,  that  celebrated  river  of  ours,  which  stretches  its  mighty 
course  almost  two  hundred  miles,  and  which  a  lad  can  scarcely 
throw  a  stone  across  at  Rome,  is  not  so  long,  nor  yet  so  wide,  as 
the  American  Mississippi — nor  yet  the  Ohio,  nor  even  the  Hud 
son.  In  America  the  people  are  absolutely  wiser  and  know  much 
more  than  their  grandfathers  did.  Tliey  do  not  plow  with  a  sharp 
ened  stick,  nor  yet  with  a  three-cornered  block  of  wood  that 
merely  scratches  the  top  of  the  ground.  We  do  that  because 
our  fathers  did,  three  thousand  years  ago,  I  suppose.  But 
those  people  have  no  holy  reverence  for  their  ancestors.  They 
plow  with  a  plow  that  is  a  sharp,  curved  blade  of  iron,  and  it 
cuts  into  the  earth  full  five  inches.  And  this  is  not  all.  They 


THE     GRANDEUR     OF     ST.     PETER'S.  271 

cut  their  grain  with  a  horrid  machine  that  mows  down  whole 
fields  in  a  day.  If  I  dared,  I  would  say  that  sometimes  they 
use  a  blasphemous  plow  that  works  by  fire  and  vapor  and 
tears  up  an  acre  of  ground  in  a  single  hour — but — but — I  see 
by  your  looks  that  you  do  not  believe  the  things  I  am  telling 
you.  Alas,  my  character  is  ruined,  and  I  am  a  branded 
speaker  of  untruths !" 

Of  course  we  have  been  to  the  monster  Church  of  St.  Peter, 
frequently.  I  knew  its  dimensions.  I  knew  it  was  a  prodigious 
structure.  I  knew  it  was  just  about  the  length  of  the  capitol  at 
Washington — say  seven  hundred  and  thirty  feet.  I  knew  it  was 
three  hundred  and  sixty-four  feet  wide,  and  consequently  wider 
than  the  capitol.  I  knew  that  the  cross  on  the  top  of  the  dome 
of  the  church  was  four  hundred  and  thirty-eight  feet  above  the 
ground,  and  therefore  about  a  hundred  or  may  be  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  feet  higher  than  the  dome  of  the  capitol. — Thus  I  had 
one  gauge.  I  wished  to  come  as  near  forming  a  correct  idea  of 
how  it  was  going  to  look,  as  possible  ;  I  had  a  curiosity  to  see 
how  much  I  would  err.  I  erred  considerably.  St.  Peter's  did 
not  look  nearly  so  large  as  the  capitol,  and  certainly  not  a 
twentieth  part  as  beautiful,  from  the  outside. 

When  we  reached  the  door,  and  stood  fairly  within  the 
church,  it  was  impossible  to  comprehend  that  it  was  a  very 
large  building.  I  had  to  cipher  a  comprehension  of  it.  I  had 
to  ransack  my  memory  for  some  more  similes.  St.  Peter's  is 
bulky.  Its  height  and  size  would  represent  two  of  the  Wash 
ington  capitol  set  one  on  top  of  the  other — if  the  capitol  were 
wider ;  or  two  blocks  or  two  blocks  and  a  half  of  ordinary  build 
ings  set  one  on  top  of  the  other.  St.  Peter's  was  that  large,  but 
it  could  and  would  not  look  so.  The  trouble  was  that  every  thing 
in  it  and  about  it  was  on  such  a  scale  of  uniform  vastness  that 
there  were  no  contrasts  to  judge  by — none  but  the  people,  and 
I  had  not  noticed  them.  They  were  insects.  The  statues  of 
children  holding  vases  of  holy  water  were  immense,  according 
to  the  tables  of  figures,  but  so  was  every  thing  else  around 
them.  The  mosaic  pictures  in  the  dome  were  huge,  and  were 
made  of  thousands  and  thousands  of  cubes  of  glass  as  large  as 


272  THE     GRANDEUR     OF     ST.     PETER'S. 

the  end  of  my  little  finger,  but  those  pictures  looked  smooth, 
and  gaudy  of  color,  and  in  good  proportion  to  the  dome.  Evi 
dently  they  would  not  answer  to  measure  by.  Away  down 
toward  the  far  end  of  the  church  (I  thought  it  was  really  clear 
at  the  far  end,  but  discovered  afterward  that  it  was  in  the  centre, 
under  the  dome,)  stood  the  thing  they  call  the  baldacchino — a 
great  bronze  pyramidal  frame-work  like  that  which  upholds  a 
mosquito  bar.  It  only  looked  like  a  considerably  magnified  bed 
stead — nothing  more.  Yet  I  knew  it  was  a  good  deal  more 
than  half  as  high  as  Niagara  Falls.  It  was  overshadowed  by  a 
dome  so  mighty  that  its  own  height  was  snubbed.  The  four 
great  square  piers  or  pillars  that  stand  equidistant  from  each 
other  in  the  church,  and  support  the  roof,  I  could  not  work  up 
to  their  real  dimensions  by  any  method  of  comparison.  I 
knew  that  the  faces  of  each  were  about  the  width  of  a  very 
large  dwelling-house  front,  (fifty  or  sixty  feet,)  and  that  they 
were  twice  as  high  as  an  ordinary  three-story  dwelling,  but 
still  they  looked  small.  I  tried  all  the  different  ways  I  could 
think  of  to  compel  myself  to  understand  how  large  St.  Peter's 
was,  but  with  small  success.  The  mosaic  portrait  of  an  Apostle 
who  was  writing  with  a  pen  six  feet  long  seemed  only  an  ordi 
nary  Apostle. 

But  the  people  attracted  my  attention  after  a  while.  To 
stand  in  the  door  of  St.  Peter's  and  look  at  men  down  toward 
its  further  extremity,  two  blocks  away,  has  a  diminishing  effect 
on  them ;  surrounded  by  the  prodigious  pictures  and  statues, 
and  lost  in  the  vast  spaces,  they  look  very  much  smaller  than 
they  would  if  they  stood  two  blocks  away  in  the  open  air.  I 
"  averaged  "  a  man  as  he  passed  me  and  watched  him  as  he 
drifted  far  down  by  the  baldacchino  and  beyond — watched 
him  dwindle  to  an  insignificant  school-boy,  and  then,  in 
the  midst  of  the  silent  throng  of  human  pigmies  gliding 
about  him,  I  lost  him.  The  church  had  lately  been  dec 
orated,  on  the  occasion  of  a  great  ceremony  in  honor  of 
St.  Peter,  and  men  were  engaged,  now,  in  removing  the 
flowers  and  gilt  paper  from  the  walls  and  pillars.  As  no 
ladders  could  reach  the  great  heights,  the  men  swung  them- 


HOLY     KELICS.  273 

selves  down  from  balustrades  and  the  capitals  of  pilasters  by 
ropes,  to  do  this  work.  The  upper  gallery  which  encircles  the 
inner  sweep  of  the  dome  is  two  hundred  and  forty  feet  above 
the  floor  of  the  church — very  few  steeples  in  America  could 
reach  up  to  it.  Visitors  always  go  up  there  to  look  down 
into  the  church  because  one  gets  the  best  idea  of  some  of  the 
heights  and  distances  from  that  point.  While  we  stood  on  the 
floor  one  of  the  workmen  swung  loose  from  that  gallery  at  the 
end  of  a  long  rope.  I  had  not  supposed,  before,  that  a  man 
could  look  so  much  like  a  spider.  He  was  insignificant  in  size, 
and  his  rope  seemed  only  a  thread.  Seeing  that  he  took  up  so 
little  space,  I  could  believe  the  story,  then,  that  ten  thousand 
troops  went  to  St.  Peter's,  once,  to  hear  mass,  and  their  com 
manding  officer  came  afterward,  and  not  finding  them,  sup 
posed  they  had  not  yet  arrived.  But  they  were  in  the  church, 
nevertheless — they  were  in  one  of  the  transepts.  Nearly  fifty 
thousand  persons  assembled  in  St.  Peter's  to  hear  the  publish 
ing  of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  It  is  esti 
mated  that  the  floor  of  the  church  affords  standing  room  for — 
for  a  large  number  of  people ;  I  have  forgotten  the  exact  fig 
ures.  But  it  is  no  matter — it  is  near  enough. 

They  have  twelve  small  pillars,  in  St.  Peter's,  which  came 
from    Solomon's  Temple.     They  have,  also — which   was   far      / 
more  interesting  to  me — a  piece  of  the  true  cross,  and  some 
nails,  and  a  part  of  the  crown  of  thorns. 

Of  course  we  ascended  to  the  summit  of  the  dome,  and  of 
course  we  also  went  up  into  the  gilt  copper  ball  which  is  above 
it. — There  was  room  there  for  a  dozen  persons,  with  a  little 
crowding,  and  it  was  as  close  and  hot  as  an  oven.  Some  of 
those  people  who  are  so  fond  of  writing  their  names  in  promi 
nent  places  had  been  there  before  us — a  million  or  two,  I 
should  think.  From  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  one  can  see  every 
notable  object  in  Rome,  from  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo  to  the 
Coliseum.  He  can  discern  the  seven  hills  upon  which  Rome 
is  built.  He  can  see  the  Tiber,  and  the  locality  of  the  bridge 
which  Horatius  kept  "  in  the  brave  days  of  old  "  when  Lars 
Porsena  attempted  to  cross  it  with  his  invading  host.  He  can 

18 


274  A     RENOWNED     PANORAMA. 

see  the  spot  where  the  Horatii  and  the  Curatii  fought  their 
famous  battle.  He  can  see  the  broad  green  Campagna,  stretch 
ing  away  toward  the  mountains,  with  its  scattered  arches  and 
broken  aqueducts  of  the  olden  time,  so  picturesque  in  their 
gray  ruin,  and  so  daintily  festooned  with  vines.  He  can  see 
the  Alban  Mountains,  the  Appenines,  the  Sabine  Hills,  and 
the  blue  Mediterranean.  He  can  see  a  panorama  that  is 
varied,  extensive,  beautiful  to  the  eye,  and  more  illustrious  in 
history  than  any  other  in  Europe. — About  his  feet  is  spread 
the  remnant  of  a  city  that  once  had  a  population  of  four 
million  souls ;  and  among  its  massed  edifices  stand  the  ruins 
of  temples,  columns,  and  triumphal  arches  that  knew  the 
Caesars,  and  the  noonday  of  Roman  splendor ;  and  close  by 
them,  in  unimpaired  strength,  is  a  drain  of  arched  and  heavy 
masonry  that  belonged  to  that  older  city  which  stood  here 
before  Romulus  and  Remus  were  born  or  Rome  thought  of. 
The  Appian  Way  is  here  yet,  and  looking  much  as  it  did,  per 
haps,  when  the  triumphal  processions  of  the  Emperors  moved 
over  it  in  other  days  bringing  fettered  princes  from  the  con 
fines  of  the  earth.  We  can  not  see  the  long  array  of  chariots 
and  mail-clad  men  laden  with  the  spoils  of  conquest,  but  we 
can  imagine  the  pageant,  after  a  fashion.  We  look  out  upon 
many  objects  of  interest  from  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's ;  and 
last  of  all,  almost  at  our  feet,  our  eyes  rest  upon  the  building 
which  was  once  the  Inquisition.  How  times  changed,  between 
the  older  ages  and  the  new  !  Some  seventeen  or  eighteen  cen 
turies  ago,  the  ignorant  men  of  Rome  were  wont  to  put  Chris 
tians  in  the  arena  of  the  Coliseum  yonder,  and  turn  the  wild 
beasts  in  upon  them  for  a  show.  It  was  for  a  lesson  as  well. 
It  was  to  teach  the  people  to  abhor  and  fear  the  new  doctrine 
the  followers  of  Christ  were  teaching.  The  beasts  tore  the 
victims  limb  from  limb  and  made  poor  mangled  corpses  of 
them  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  But  when  the  Christians 
came  into  power ,  when  the  holy  Mother  Church  became  mis 
tress  of  the  barbarians,  she  taught  them  the  error  of  their  ways 
by  no  such  means.  No,  she  put  them  in  this  pleasant  Inquisi 
tion  and  pointed  to  the  Blessed  Redeemer,  who  was  so  gentle 


OLD     MONKISH    FRAUDS.  275 

and  so  merciful  toward  all  men,  and  they  urged  the  barbarians 
to  love  him  ;  and  they  did  all  they  could  to  persuade  them  to 
love  and  honor  him — first  by  twisting  their  thumbs  out  of 
joint  with  a  screw ;  then  by  nipping  their  flesh  with  pincers — 
red-hot  ones,  because  they  are  the  most  comfortable  in  cold 
weather ;  then  by  skinning  them  alive  a  little,  and  finally  by 
roasting  them  in  public.  They  always  convinced  those  barba 
rians.  The  true  religion,  properly  administered,  as  the  good 
Mother  Church  used  to  administer  it,  is  very,  very  soothing.  It 
is  wonderfully  persuasive,  also.  There  is  a  great  difference 
between  feeding  parties  to  wild  beasts  and  stirring  up  their 
finer  feelings  in  an  Inquisition.  One  is  the  system  of  degraded 
barbarians,  the  other  of  enlightened,  civilized  people.  It  is  a 
great  pity  the  playful  Inquisition  is  no  more. 

I  prefer  not  to  describe  St.  Peter's.  It  has  been  done 
before.  The  ashes  of  Peter,  the  disciple  of  the  Saviour,  repose 
in  a  crypt  under  the  baldaccJiino.  We  stood  reverently  in  that 
place ;  so  did  wre  also  in  the  Mamertine  Prison,  where  he  was 
confined,  where  he  converted  the  soldiers,  and  where  tradition 
says  he  caused  a  spring  of  water  to  flow  in  order  that  he  might 
baptize  them.  But  when  they  showed  us  the  print  of  Peter's 
face  in  the  hard  stone  of  the  prison  wall  and  said  he  made  that 
by  falling  up  against  it,  we  doubted.  And  when,  also,  the 
monk  at  the  church  of  San  Sebastian  showed  us  a  paving-stone 
with  two  great  footprints  in  it  and  said  that  Peter's  feet  made 
those,  we  lacked  confidence  again.  Such  things  do  not  impress 
one.  The  monk  said  that  angels  came  and  liberated  Peter 
from  prison  by  night,  and  he  started  away  from  Rome  by  the 
Appian  Way.  The  Saviour  met  him  and  told  him  to  go  back, 
which  he  did.  Peter  left  those  footprints  in  the  stone  upon 
which  he  stood  at  the  time.  It  was  not  stated  how  it  was  ever 
discovered  whose  footprints  they  were,  seeing  the  interview 
occurred  secretly  and  at  night.  The  print  of  the  face  in  the 
prison  was  that  of  a  man  of  common  size ;  the  footprints  were 
those  of  a  man  ten  or  twelve  feet  high.  The  discrepancy  con 
firmed  our  unbelief. 

We  necessarily  visited  the  Forum,  where  Csesar  was  assassi- 


276 


THE     RUINED'  COLISEUM 


nated,  and  also  the  Tarpeian  Rock.  We  saw  the  Dying  Gla 
diator  at  the  Capitol,  and  I  think  that  even  we  appreciated  that 
wonder  of  art ;  as  much,  perhaps,  as  we  did  that  fearful  story 


wrought  in  marble,  in  the 
Vatican — the  Laocoon.  And 
then  the  Coliseum. 

Every  body  knows  the  pic 
ture  of  the  Coliseum ;  every 
body  recognizes  at  once  that 
"  looped  and  windowed  "  band 
box  with  a  side  bitten  out. 
Being  rather  isolated,  it  shows 
to  better  advantage  than  any  other  of  the  monuments  of  ancient 
Rome.  Even  the  beautiful  Pantheon,  whose  pagan  altars  uphold 
the  cross,  now,  and  whose  Venus,  tricked  out  in  consecrated 
gimcracks,  does  reluctant  duty  as  a  Virgin  Mary  to-day,  is  built 
about  with  shabby  houses  and  its  stateliness  sadly  marred. 
But  the  monarch  of  all  European  ruins,  the  Coliseum,  main 
tains  that  reserve  and  that  royal  seclusion  which  is  proper  to 
majesty.  Weeds  and  flowers  spring  from  its  massy  arches  and 
its  circling  seats,  and  vines  hang  their  fringes  from  its  lofty 


THE     RUINED     COLISEUM.  277 

walls.  An  impressive  silence  broods  over  the  monstrous  struc 
ture  where  such  multitudes  of  men  and  women  were  wont  to 
assemble  in  other  days.  The  butterflies  have  taken  the  places 
of  the  queens  of  fashion  and  beauty  of  eighteen  centuries  ago, 
and  the  lizards  sun  themselves  in  the  sacred  seat  of  the  Empe 
ror.  More  vividly  than  all  the  written  histories,  the  Coliseum 
tells  the  story  of  Rome's  grandeur  and  Rome's  decay.  It  is 
the  worthiest  type  of  both  that  exists.  Moving  about  the 
Rome  of  to-day,  we  might  find  it  hard  to  believe  in  her  old 
magnificence  and  her  millions  of  population ;  but  with  this 
stubborn  evidence  before  us  that  she  was  obliged  to  have  a 
theatre  with  sitting  room  for  eighty  thousand  persons  and 
standing  room  for  twenty  thousand  more,  to  accommodate  such 
of  her  citizens  as  required  amusement,  we  find  belief  less  diffi 
cult.  The  Coliseum  is  over  one  thousand  six  hundred  feet 
long,  seven  hundred  and  fifty  wide,  and  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  high.  Its  shape  is  oval. 

In  America  we  make  convicts  useful  at  the  same  time  that 
we  punish  them  for  their  crimes.  We  farm  them  out  and 
compel  them  to  earn  money  for  the  State  by  making  barrels 
and  building  roads.  Thus  wre  combine  business  with  retribu 
tion,  and  all  things  are  lovely.  But  in  ancient  Rome  they 
combined  religious  duty  with  pleasure.  Since  it  was  necessary 
that  the  new  sect  called  Christians  should  be  exterminated,  the 
people  judged  it  wise  to  make  this  work  profitable  to  the  State 
at  the  same  time,  and  entertaining  to  the  public.  In  addition 
to  the  gladiatorial  combats  and  other  shows,  they  sometimes 
threw  members  of  the  hated  sect  into  the  arena  of  the  Coliseum 
and  turned  wild  beasts  in  upon  them.  It  is  estimated  that 
seventy  thousand  Christians  suffered  martyrdom  in  this  place. 
This  has  made  the  Coliseum  holy  ground,  in  the  eyes  of  the' 
followers  of  the  Saviour.  And  well  it  might ;  for  if  the  chain 
that  bound  a  saint,  and  the  footprints  a  saint  has  left  upon  a 
stone  he  chanced  to  stand  upon,  be  holy,  surely  the  spot  where 
a  man  gave  up  his  life  for  his  faith  is  holy. 

Seventeen  or  eighteen  centuries  ago  this  Coliseum  was  the 
theatre  of  Rome,  and  Rome  was  mistress  of  tlie  world..    Splen- 


278 


THE     COLISEUM     IX     ITS     PRIME. 


did  pageants  were  exhibited  here,  in  presence  of  the  Emperor, 
the  great  ministers  of  State,  the  nobles,  and  vast  audiences  of 
citizens  of  smaller  consequence.  Gladiators  fought  with  gla 
diators  and  at  times  with  warrior  prisoners  from  many  a 
distant  land.  It  was  the  theatre  of  Rome — of  the  world — 
and  the  man  of  fashion  who  could  not  let  fall  in  a  casual 
and  unintentional  manner  something  about  "  my  private  box 
at  the  Coliseum  "  could  not  move  in  the  first  circles.  When 
the  clothing-store  merchant  wished  to  consume  the  corner 
grocery  man  with  envy,  he  bought  secured  seats  in  the  front 
row  and  let  the  thing  be  known.  When  the  irresistible 
dry  goods  clerk  wished  to  blight  and  destroy,  according  to  his 
native  instinct,  he  got  himself  up  regardless  of  expense  and 
took  some  other  fellow's  young  lady  to  the  Coliseum,  and  then 

accented  the  affront  by  cramming  her 
with  ice  cream  between  the  acts,  or 
by  approaching  the  cage  and  stirring 
up  the  martyrs  with  his  whalebone 
cane  for  her  edification.  The  Roman 
swell  was  in  his  true  element  only 
when  he  stood  up  against  a  pillar  and 
fingered  his  moustache  unconscious 
of  the  ladies ;  when  he  viewed  the 
bloody  combats  through  an  opera- 
glass  two  inches  long ;  when  he  ex 
cited  the  envy  of  provincials  by  crit 
icisms  which  showed  that  he  had 
been  to  the  Coliseum  many  and 
many  a  time  and  was  long  ago  over 
.  the  novelty  of  it ;  wrhen  he  turned 
away  with  a  yawn  at  last  and  said, 

"  He  a  star !  handles  his  sword  like 
an  apprentice  brigand !  he'll  do  for 
the  country,  may.be,  but  he  don't  answer  for  the  metropolis !" 
Glad  was  the  contraband  that  had  a  seat  in  the  pit  at  the 
Saturday  matinee,  and  happy  the  Roman  street-boy  w^ho  ate 
his  peanuts  .and  guyed  .the  .gladiators  from  the  dizzy  gallery. 


OLD  ROMAN. 


A     PLAYBILL     1700     YEARS     OLD.  279 

For  me  was  reserved  the  high  honor  of  discovering  among 
the  rubbish  of  the  ruined  Coliseum  the  only  playbill  of  that 
establishment  now  extant.  There  was  a  suggestive  smell  of 
mint-drops  about  it  still,  a  corner  of  it  had  evidently  been 
chewed,  and  on  the  margin,  in  choice  Latin,  these  words  were 
written  in  a  delicate  female  hand : 

"  Me  ft  me  on  the  Tarpeian  Pock  to-morrotv  evening,  dear,  at  sharp  seven.  Mother 
will  be  absent  on  a  visit  to  her  friends  in  the  Sabine  Hills. 

CLAUDIA." 

Ah,  where  is  that  lucky  youth  to-day,  and  where  the  little 
hand  that  wrote  those  dainty  lines  ?  Dust  and  ashes  these 
seventeen  hundred  years ! 

Thus  reads  the  bill : 


EOMAS"    COLISEUM. 

UNPARALLELED    ATTRACTION! 

NEW  PROPERTIES!    NEW   LIONS!  NEW  GLADIATORS! 

Engagement  of  the  renowned 
MARCUS     MARCELLUS     VALERIAN! 

FOR     SIX     NIGHTS     ONLY! 

The  management  beg  leave  to  offer  to  the  public  an  entertainment  surpassing  in 
magnificence  any  thing  that  has  heretofore  been  attempted  on  any  stage.  No 
expense  has  been  spared  to  make  the  opening  season  one  which  shall  be  worthy  tho 
generous  patronage  which  the  management  feel  sure  will  crown  their  efforts.  The 
management  beg  leave  to  state  that  they  have  succeeded  in  securing  the  services 

of  a 

GALAXY    OF    TALENT! 

such  as  has  not  been  beheld  in  Rome  before. 

The  performance  will  commence  this  evening  with  a 

GRAND      BROADSWORD      COMBAT! 

between  two  young  and  promising  amateurs  and  a  celebrated  Parthian  gladiator 
who  has  just  arrived  a  prisoner  from  the  Camp  of  Verus. 
This  will  be  followed  by  a  grand  moral 

BATTLE-AX     ENGAGEMENT! 


280  A     PLAYBILL     1700     YEARS     OLD. 

* 

between  the  renowned  Valerian  (with  one  hand  tied  behind  him,)  and  t\vo  gigantic 
savages  from  Britain. 

After  which  the  renowned  Valerian  (if  he  survive,)  will  fight  with  the  broad 
sword, 

LEFT-HANDED  ! 

against  six  Sophomores  and  a  Freshman  from  the  Gladiatorial  College ! 

A  long  series  of  brilliant  engagements  will  follow,  in  which  the  finest  talent  of 
the  Empire  will  take  part. 

After  which  the  celebrated  Infant  Prodigy  known  as 

"THE    YOUNG    ACHILLES," 

will  engage  four  tiger  whelps  in  combat,  armed  with  no  other  weapon  than  his  little 
spear ! 

The  whole  to  conclude  with  a  chaste  and  elegant 

GENERAL     SLAUGHTER! 

In  which  thirteen  African  Lions  and  twenty-two  Barbarian  Prisoners  will  war  with 
each  other  until  all  are  exterminated. 

BOX     OFFICE     NOW    OPEN. 

Dress  Circle  One  Dollar ;  Children  and  Servants  half  price. 
An  efficient  police  force  will  be  on  hand  to  preserve  order  and  keep  the  wild 
beasts  from  leaping  the  railings  and  discommoding  the  audience. 

Doors  open  at  7 ;  performance  begins  at  8. 
POSITIVELY  NO  FREE  LIST. 

Diodorus  Job  Press. 


It  was  as  singular  as  it  was  gratifying  that  I  was  also  so 
fortunate  as  to  find  among  the  rubbish  of  the  arena,  a  stained 
and  mutilated  copy  of  the  Roman  Daily  Battle-Ax,  containing 
a  critique  upon  this  very  performance.  It  comes  to  hand  too 
late  by  many  centuries  to  rank  as  news,  and  therefore  I  trans 
late  and  publish  it  simply  to  show  how  very  little  the  general 
style  and  phraseology  of  dramatic  criticism  has  altered  in  the 
ages  that  have  dragged  their  slow  length  along  since  the  car 
riers  laid  this  one  damp  and  fresh  before  their  Roman  patrons  : 


"THE  OPESTING  SEASON. — COLISEUM. — Notwithstanding  the  inclemency  of  the 
weather,  quite  a  respectable  number  of  the  rank  and  fashion  of  the  city  assembled 
last  night  to  witness  the  debut  upon  metropolitan  boards  of  the  young  tragedian 


ANCIENT    ROMAN    NEWSPAPER    CRITIQUE.         281 

who  has  of  late  been  winning  such  golden  opinions  in  the  amphitheatres  of  the 
provinces.  Some  sixty  thousand  persons  were  present,  and  but  for  the  fact  that  the 
streets  were  almost  impassable,  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  the  house  would  have  been 
full.  His  august  Majesty,  the  Emperor  Aurelius,  occupied  the  imperial  box,  and 
was  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.  Many  illustrious  nobles  arid  generals  of  the  Empire 
graced  the  occasion  with  their  presence,  and  not  the  least  among  them  was  the 
young  patrician  lieutenant  whose  laurels,  won  in  the  ranks  of  the  '•  Thundering 
Legion,"  are  still  so  green  upon  his  brow.  The  cheer  which  greeted  his  entrance 
was  heard  beyond  the  Tiber ! 

'•  The  late  repairs  and  decorations  add  both  to  the  comeliness  and  the  comfort  of 
the  Coliseum.  The  new  cushions  are  a  great  improvement  upon  the  hard  marble 
seats  we  have  been  so  long  accustomed  to.  The  present  management  deserve  well 
of  the  public.  They  have  restored  to  the  Coliseum  the  gilding,  the  rich  upholstery 


COLISEUM   OF   ANCIENT   ROME. 


and  the  uniform  magnificence  which  old  Coliseum  frequenters  tell  us  Rome  was  so 
proud  of  fifty  years  ago. 


282         ANCIENT    ROMAN    NEWSPAPER    CRITIQUE. 

"The  opening  scene  last  night — the  broadsword  combat  between  two  young 
amateurs  and  a  famous  Parthian  gladiator  who  was  sent  here  a  prisoner — was  very 
fine.  The  elder  of  the  two  young  gentlemen  handled  his  weapon  with  a  grace  that 
marked  the  possession  of  extraordinary  talent.  His  feint  of  thrusting,  followed 
instantly  by  a  happily  delivered  blow  which  unhelmeted  the  Parthian,  was  received 
with  hearty  applause.  He  was  not  thoroughly  up  in  the  backhanded  stroke,  but 
it  was  very  gratifying  to  his  numerous  friends  to  know  that,  in  time,  practice  would 
have  overcome  this  defect.  However,  he  was  killed.  His  sisters,  who  were  present, 
expressed  considerable  regret.  His  mother  left  the  Coliseum.  The  other  youth 
maintained  the  contest  with  such  spirit  as  to  call  forth  enthusiastic  bursts  of 
applause.  When  at  last  he  fell  a  corpse,  his  aged  mother  ran  screaming,  with  hair 
disheveled  and  tears  streaming  from  her  eyes,  and  swooned  away  just  as  her  hands 
were  clutching  at  the  railings  of  the  arena.  She  was  promptly  removed  by  the 
police.  Under  the  circumstances  the  woman's  conduct  was  pardonable,  perhaps, 
but  we  suggest  that  such  exhibitions  interfere  with  the  decorum  which  should  be 
preserved  during  the  performances,  and  are  highly  improper  in  the  presence  of  the 
Emperor.  The  Parthian  prisoner  fought  bravely  and  well;  and  well  he  might,  for 
he  was  fighting  for  both  life  and  liberty.  His  wife  and  children  were  there  to  nerve 
his  arm  with  their  love,  and  to  remind  him  of  the  old  home  he  should  see  again  if 
he  conquered.  When  his  second  assailant  fell,  the  woman  clasped  her  children  to 
her  breast  and  wept  for  joy.  But  it  was  only  a  transient  happiness.  The  captive 
staggered  toward  her  and  she  saw  that  the  liberty  he  had  earned  was  earned  too 
late.  He  was  wounded  uuto  death.  Thus  the  first  act  closed  in  a  manner  which 
was  entirely  satisfactory.  The  manager  was  called  before  the  curtain  and  returned 
his  thanks  for  the  honor  done  him,  in  a  speech  which  was  replete  with  wit  and 
humor,  and  closed  by  hoping  that  his  humble  efforts  to  afford  cheerful  and  instruc 
tive  entertainment  would  continue  to  meet  with  the  approbation  of  the  Roman 
public. 

"  The  star  now  appeared,  and  was  received  with  vociferous  applause  and  the 
simultaneous  waving  of  sixty  thousand  handkerchiefs.  Marcus  Marcellus  Valerian 
(stage  name — his  real  name  is  Smith,)  is  a  splendid  specimen  of  physical  develop 
ment,  and  an  artist  of  rare  merit.  His  management  of  the  battle-ax  is  wonderful. 
His  gayety  and  his  playfulness  are  irresistible,  in  his  comic  parts,  and  yet  they  are 
inferior  to  his  sublime  conceptions  in  the  grave  realm  of  tragedy.  When  his  ax  was 
describing  fiery  circles  about  the  heads  of  the  bewildered  barbarians,  in  exact  time 
with  his  springing  body  and  his  prancing  legs,  the  audience  gave  way  to  uncon 
trollable  bursts  of  laughter;  but  when  the  back  of  his  weapon  broke  the  skull  of 
one  and  almost  .n  the  same  instant  its  edge  clove  the  other's  body  in  twain,  the 
howl  of  enthusiastic  applause  that  shook  the  building,  was  the  acknowledgment  of 
a  critical  assemblage  that  he  was  a  master  of  the  noblest  department  of  his  profes 
sion.^  If  he  has  a  fault,  (and  we  are  sorry  to  even  intimate  that  he  has,)  it  is  that 
of  glancing  at  the  audience,  in  the  midst  of  the  most  exciting  moments  of  the  per 
formance,  as  if  seeking  admiration.  The  pausing  in  a  fight  to  bow  when  bouquets 
are  thrown  to  him  is  also  in  bad  taste.  In  the  great  left-handed  combat  he  appeared 
to  be  looking  at  the  audience  half  the  time,  instead  of  carving  his  adversaries ;  and 
when  he  had  slain  all  the  sophomores  and  was  dallying  with  the  freshman,  he 


ANCIENT    ROMAN    NEWSPAPER    CRITIQUE.         283 

stooped  and  snatched  a  bouquet  as  it  fell,  and  offered  it  to  his  adversary  at  a  timo 
when  a  blow  was  descending  which  promised  favorably  to  be  his  death-warrant. 
Such  levity  is  proper  enough  in  the  provinces,  we  make  no  doubt,  but  it  ill  suits  the 
dignity  of  the  metropolis.  We  trust  our  young  friend  will  take  these  remarks  in 
good  part,  for  wo  mean  them  solely  for  his  benefit.  All  who  know  us  are  aware 
that  although  we  are  at  times  justly  severe  upon  tigers  and  martyrs,  we  never  in 
tentionally  offend  gladiators. 

"The  Infant  Prodigy  performed  wonders.  He  overcame  his  four  tiger  whelps 
with  ease,  and  with  no  other  hurt  than  the  loss  of  a  portion  of  his  scalp.  The  Gen 
eral  Slaughter  was  rendered  with  a  faithfulness  to  details  which  reflects  the  highest 
credit  upon  the  late  participants  in  it. 

"  Upon  the  whole,  last  night's  performances  shed  honor  not  only  upon  the  man 
agement  but  upon  the  city  that  encourages  and  sustains  such  wholesome  and 
instructive  entertainments.  We  would  simply  suggest  that  the  practice  of  vulgar 
young  boys  in  the  gallery  of  shying  peanuts  and  paper  pellets  at  the  tigers,  and 
saying  "  Hi-yil"  and  manifesting  approbation  or  dissatisfaction  by  such  observations 
as  "Bully  for  the  lion!"  "Go  it,  Gladdy!"  "Boots!"  "Speech!"  "Take  a 
walk  round  the  block!"  and  so  on,  are  extremely  reprehensible,  when  the  Emperor 
is  present,  and  ought  to  be  stopped  by  the  police.  Several  times  last  night,  when 
the  supernumeraries  entered  the  arena  to  drag  out  the  bodies,  the  young  ruffians  in 
the  gallery  shouted,  "Supe!  supe!"  and  also,  "Oh,  what  a  coat!"  and  "Why  don't 
you  pad  them  shanks?"  and  made  use  of  various  other  remarks  expressive  of  deri 
sion.  These  things  are  very  annoying  to  the  audience. 

"  A  matinee  for  the  little  folks  is  promised  for  this  afternoon,  on  which  occasion 
several  martyrs  will  be  eaten  by  the  tigers.  The  regular  performance  will  continue 
every  night  till  further  notice.  Material  change  of  programme  every  evening. 
Benefit  of  Valerian,  Tuesday,  29th,  if  he  lives." 


I  have  been  a  dramatic  critic  myself,  in  my  time,  and  I  was 
often  surprised  to  notice  how  much  more  I  knew  about  Hamlet 
than  Forrest  did ;  and  it  gratifies  me  to  observe,  now,  how 
much  better  my  brethren  of  ancient  times  knew  how  a  broad 
sword  battle  ought  to  be  fought  than  the  gladiators. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

SO  far,  good.  If  any  man  has  a  right  to  feel  proud  of  him 
self,  and  satisfied,  surely  it  is  I.  For  I  have  written 
about  the  Coliseum,  and  the  gladiators,  the  martyrs,  and  the 
lions,  and  yet  have  never  once  used  the  phrase  "  butchered  to 
make  a  Roman  holyday."  I  am  the  only  free  white  man  of 
mature  age,  who  has  accomplished  this  since  Byron  originated 
the  expression. 

Butchered  to  make  a  Roman  holyday  sounds  well  for  the 
first  seventeen  or  eighteen  hundred  thousand  times  one  sees  it 
in  print,  but  after  that  it  begins  to  grow  tiresome.  I  find  it 
in  all  the  books  concerning  Rome — and  here  latterly  it  re 
minds  me  of  Judge  Oliver.  Oliver  was  a  young  lawyer,  fresh 
from  the  schools,  who  had  gone  out  to  the  deserts  of  Nevada 
to  begin  life.  He  found  that  country,  and  our  ways  of  life, 
there,  in  those  early  days,  different  from  life  in  ~Ne\v  England 
or  Paris.  But  he  put  on  a  woollen  shirt  and  strapped  a  navy 
revolver  to  his  person,  took  to  the  bacon  and  beans  of  the 
country,  and  determined  to  do  in  Kevada  as  Xevada  did. 
Oliver  accepted  the  situation  so  completely  that  although  he 
must  have  sorrowed  over  many  of  his  trials,  he  never  com 
plained — that  is,  he  never  complained  but  once.  He,  two  others, 
and  myself,  started  to  the  new  silver  mines  in  the  Ilumboldt 
mountains — he  to  be  Probate  Jud^e  of  Ilumboldt  county,  and 

O  «/   / 

we  to  mine.  The  distance  was  two  hundred  miles.  It  was 
dead  of  winter.  We  bought  a  two-horse  wagon  and  put 
eighteen  hundred  pounds  of  bacon,  flour,  beans,  blasting- 
powder,  picks  and  shovels  in  it ;  we  bought  two  sorry-looking 


THE     UNCOMPLAINING     MAN.  285 

Mexican  "  plugs,"  with  the  hair  turned  the  wrong  way  and 
more  corners  on  their  bodies  than  there  are  on  the  mosque  of 
Omar;  we  hitched  up  and  started.  It  was  a  dreadful  trip. 
But  Oliver  did  not  complain.  The  horses  dragged  the  wagon 
two  miles  from  town  and  then  gave  out.  Then  we  three 
pushed  the  wagon  seven  miles,  and  Oliver  moved  ahead  and 
pulled  the  horses  after  him  by  the  bits.  We  complained,  but 


DID   NOT   COMPLAIN. 


Oliver  did  not.  The  ground  was  frozen,  and  it  froze  our 
backs  while  we  slept ;  the  wind  swept  across  our  faces  and 
froze  our  noses.  Oliver  did  not  complain.  Five  days  of 
pushing  the  wagon  by  day  and  freezing  by  night  brought  us 
to  the  bad  part  of  the  journey — the  Forty  Mile  .Desert,  or  the 
Great  American  Desert,  if  you  please.  Still,  this  mildest- 
mannered  man  that  ever  was,  had  not  complained.  We 
started  across  at  eight  in  the  morning,  pushing  through  sand 
that  had  no  bottom ;  toiling  all  day  long  by  the  wrecks  of  a 
thousand  wagons,  the  skeletons  of  ten  thousand  oxen ;  *  by 
wagon-tires  enough  to  hoop  the  Washington  Monument  to  the 
top,  and  ox-chains  enough  to  girdle  Long  Island ;  by  human 
graves ;  with  our  throats  parched  always,  with  thirst ;  lips 
bleeding  from  the  alkali  dust ;  hungry,  perspiring,  and  very, 
very  weary — so  weary  that  when  we  dropped  in  the  sand 
every  fifty  yards  to  rest  the  horses,  we  could  hardly  keep  from 
going  to  sleep — no  complaints  from  Oliver:  none  the  next 
morning  at  three  o'clock,  when  we  got  across,  tired  to  death. 


286 


THE     UNCOMPLAINING     MAN. 


Awakened  two  or  three  nights  afterward  at  midnight,  in  a  narrow 
canon,  by  the  snow  falling  on  our  faces,  and  appalled  at  the 
imminent  danger  of  being  "  snowed  in,"  we  harnessed  up  and 
pushed  on  till  eight  in  the  morning,  passed  the  "  Divide  "  and 
knew  we  were  saved.  No  complaints.  Fifteen  days  of  hard 
ship  and  fatigue  brought  us  to  the  end  of  the  two  hundred 
miles,  and  the  Judge  had  not  complained.  We  wondered  if 
any  thing  could  exasperate  him.  We  built  a  Ilumboldt  house. 
It  is  done  in  this  way.  You  dig  a  square  in  the  steep  base  of 
the  mountain,  and  set  up  two  uprights  and  top  them  w^ith  two 
joists.  Then  you  stretch  a  great  sheet  of  "  cotton  domestic  " 
from  the  point  where  the  joists  join  the  hill-side  down  over 
the  joists  to  the  ground ;  this  makes  the  roof  and  the  front  of 

the  mansion ;  the  sides 
and  back  are  the  dirt 
walls  your  digging  has 
left.  A  chimney  is  easily 
made  by  turning  up  one 
corner  of  the  roof.  Oli 
ver  was  sitting  alone  in 
this  dismal  den,  one 
night,  by  a  sage-brush 
fire,  writing  poetry;  he 
was  very  fond  of  digging 
poetry  out  of  himself — or 
blasting  it  out  when  it 
came  hard.  He  heard  an 
animal's  footsteps  close 
to  the  roof;  a  stone  or 
two  and  some  dirt  came 
through  and  fell  by  him. 
He  grew  uneasy  and  said 
"Hi! — clear  out  from 

HUMUOLDT   HOUSE.  .,  ,,  |5,        /» 

there,  can't  you  I" — from 

time  to  time.  But  by  and  by  he  fell  asleep  where  he  sat, 
and  pretty  soon  a  mule  fell  down  the  chimney !  The  fire  flew 
in  every  direction,  and  Oliver  went  over  backwards.  About 


THE     UNCOMPLAINING     MAN.  287 

ten  nights  after  that,  he  recovered  confidence  enough  to  go  to 
writing  poetry  again.  Again  he  dozed  off  to  sleep,  and  again 
a  mule  fell  down  the  chimney.  This  time,  about  half  of  that 
side  of  the  house  came  in  with  the  mule.  Struggling  to  get 
up,  the  mule  kicked  the  candle  out  and  smashed  most  of  the 
kitchen  furniture,  and  raised  considerable  dust.  These  violent 
awakenings  must  have  been  annoying  to  Oliver,  but  he  never 
complained.  He  moved  to  a  mansion  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  canon,  because  he  had  noticed  the  mules  did  not  go  there. 
One  night  about  eight  o'clock  he  was  endeavoring  to  finish 
his  poem,  when  a  stone  rolled  in — then  a  hoof  appeared  below 
the  canvas — then  part  of  a  cow — the  after  part.  He  leaned 
back  in  dread,  and  shouted  "  Ilooy  !  hooy  !  get  out  of  this !" 
and  the  cow  struggled  manfully — lost  ground  steadily — dirt 
and  dust  streamed  down,  and  before  Oliver  could  get  well 
away,  the  entire  cow  crashed  through  on  to  the  table  and 
made  a  shapeless  wreck  of  every  thing ! 

Then,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  I  think,  Oliver  com 
plained.  He  said, 

"  This  thing  is  growing  monotonous  /" 

Then  he  resigned  his  judgeship  and  left  Ilumboldt  county. 
"  Butchered  to  make  a  Roman  holyday"  has  grown  monot 
onous  to  me. 

In  this  connection  I  wish  to  say  one  word  about  Michael 
Angelo  Buonarotti.  I  used  to  worship  the  mighty  genius  of 
Michael  Angelo — that  man  who  was  great  in  poetry,  painting, 
sculpture,  architecture — great  in  every  thing  he  undertook. 
But  I  do  not  want  Michael  Angelo  for  breakfast — for  luncheon 
—for  dinner — for  tea — for  supper — for  between  meals.  I  like  a 
change,  occasionally.  In  Genoa,  he  designed  every  thing ;  in 
Milan  he  or  his  pupils  designed  every  thing ;  he  designed  the 
Lake  of  Como ;  in  Padua,  Verona,  Venice,  Bologna,  who  did 
we  ever  hear  of,  from  guides,  but  Michael  Angelo  ?  In  Flor 
ence,  he  painted  every  thing,  designed  every  thing,  nearly,  and 
what  he  did  not  design  he  used  to  sit  on  a  favorite  stone  and 
look  at,  and  they  showed  us  the  stone.  In  Pisa  he  designed 
every  thing  but  the  old  shot-tower,  and  they  would  have  at- 


288 


AX     EXASPERATING     SUBJECT. 


tributed  that  to  him  if  it  had  not  been  so  awfully  out  of  the 
perpendicular.  He  designed  the  piers  of  Leghorn  and  the 
custom  house  regulations  of  Civita  Vecchia.  But,  here — here 
it  is  frightful.  He  designed  St.  Peters ;  he  designed  the 
Pope ;  he  designed  the  Pantheon,  the  uniform  of  the  Pope's 
soldiers,  the  Tiber,  the  Vatican,  the  Coliseum,  the  Capitol,  the 
Tarpeiari  Rock,  the  Barberini  Palace.  St.  John  Lateran,  the 
Campagna,  the  Appian  AVay,  the  Seven  Hills,  the  Baths  of 
Caraealla,  the  Clandian  Aqueduct,  the  Cloaca  Maxima — the 
eternal  bore  designed  the  Eternal  City,  and  unless  all  men 
and  books  do  lie,  he  painted  every  thing  in  it !  Dan  said  the 
other  day  to  the  guide,  "  Enough,  enough,  enough  !  Say  no 

more !  Lump  the 
whole  thing  !  say  that 
the  Creator  made 
Italy  from  designs  by 
Michael  Angelo  !" 

I  never  felt  so  fer 
vently  thankful,  so 
soothed,  so  tranquil, 
so  filled  with  a  blessed 
peace,  as  I  did  yester 
day  when  I  learned 
that  Michael  Angelo 
was  dead. 

But  we  have  taken 
it  out  of  this  guide. 
He  has  marched  us 
through  miles  of  pic 
tures  and  sculpture 

in  the  vast  corridors  of  the  Vatican ;  and  through  miles  of 
pictures  and  sculpture  in  twenty  other  palaces  ;  he  has  shown 
us  the  great  picture  in  the  Sistine  Chapel,  and  frescoes  enough 
to  frescoe  the  heavens — pretty  much  all  done  by  Michael 
Angelo.  So  with  him  we  have  played  that  game  which  has 
vanquished  so  many  guides  for  us — imbecility  and  idiotic 
questions.  These  creatures  never  suspect — they  have  no  idea 
of  a  sarcasm. 


DAN. 


THE     ROMAN     GUIDE. 


289 


BRONZE   STATUE. 


He  shows  us  a  figure  and  says :  "  Statoo  brunzo."  (Bronze 
statue.) 

We  look  at  it  indifferently  and  the  doctor  asks :  "  By  Mi 
chael  Angelo  ?" 

"No — not  know 
who." 

Then  he  shows  us 
the  ancient  Roman 
Forum.  The  doc 
tor  asks :  "  Michael 
Angelo  ?" 

A  stare  from  the 
guide.  "No — thou- 
san'  year  before  he 
is  born." 

Then  an  Egyp 
tian  obelisk.  A- 
gain  :  "  Michael 
Angelo?" 

"  Oh,  mon  dieu, 
genteelmen !  Zis  is  two  thousan'  year  before  he  is  born !" 

He  grows  so  tired  of  that  unceasing  question  sometimes, 
that  he  dreads  to  show  us  any  thing  at  all.  The  wretch  has 
tried  all  the  ways  he  can  think  of  to  make  us  comprehend 
that  Michael  Angelo  is  only  responsible  for  the  creation  of  a 
part  of  the  world,  but  somehow  he  has  not  succeeded  yet. 
Relief  for  overtasked  eyes  and  brain  from  study  and  sight 
seeing  is  necessary,  or  we  shall  become  idiotic  sure  enough. 
Therefore  this  guide  must  continue  to  suffer.  If  he  does  not 
enjoy  it,  so  much  the  worse  for  him.  We  do. 

In  this  place  I  may  as  well  jot  down  a  chapter  concerning 
those  necessary  nuisances,  European  guides.  Many  a  man 
has  wished  in  his  heart  he  could  do  without  his  guide ;  but 
knowing  he  could  not,  has  wished  he  could  get  some  amuse 
ment  out  of  him  as  a  remuneration  for  the  affliction  of  his 
society.  We  accomplished  this  latter  matter,  and  if  our 
experience  can  be  made  useful  to  others  they  are  welcome  to  it. 

19 


290  ASININE     GUIDES     IN     GENERAL. 

Guides  know  about  enough  English  to  tangle  every  thing 
up  so  that  a  man  can  make  neither  head  or  tail  of  it.  They 
know  their  story  by  heart — the  history  of  every  statue,  paint 
ing,  cathedral  or  other  wonder  they  show  you.  They  know  it 
and  tell  it  as  a  parrot  would — and  if  you  interrupt,  and  throw 
them  off  the  track,  they  have  to  go  back  and  begin  over  again. 
All  their  lives  long,  they  are  employed  in  showing  strange 
things  to  foreigners  and  listening  to  their  bursts  of  admiration. 
It  is  human  nature  to  take  delight  in  exciting  admiration.  It 

o  o 

is  what  prompts  children  to  say  " smart"  things,  and  do  ab 
surd  ones,  and  in  other  ways  "  show  off"  when  company  is 
present.  It  is  what  makes  gossips  turn  out  in  rain  and  storm 
to  go  and  be  the  first  to  tell  a  startling  bit  of  news.  Think, 
then,  what  a  passion  it  becomes  with  a  guide,  whose  privilege 
it  is,  every  day,  to  show  to  strangers  wonders  that  throw  them 
into  perfect  ecstasies  of  admiration  !  He  gets  so  that  he  could 
not  by  any  possibility  live  in  a  soberer  atmosphere.  After  we 
discovered  this,  we  never  went  into  ecstacies  any  more — we 
never  admired  any  thing — we  never  showed  any  but  impassi 
ble  faces  and  stupid  indifference  in  the  presence  of  the  sub- 
limest  wonders  a  guide  had  to  display.  We  had  found  their 
weak  point.  We  have  made  good  use  of  it  ever  since.  We 
have  made  some  of  those  people  savage,  at  times,  but  we  have 
never  lost  our  own  serenity. 

The  doctor  asks  the  questions,  generally,  because  he  can 
keep  his  countenance,  and  look  more  like  an  inspired  idiot,, 
and  throw  more  imbecility  into  the  tone  of  his  voice  than  any 
man  that  lives.     It  comes  natural  to  him. 

The  guides  in  Genoa  are  delighted  to  secure  an  American 
party,  because  Americans  so  much  wonder,  and  deal  so  much 
in  sentiment  and  emotion  before  any  relic  of  Columbus.  Our 
guide  there  fidgeted  about  as  if  he  had  swallowed  a  spring 
mattrass.  He  was  full  of  animation — full  of  impatience.  He 
said: 

"  Come  wis  me,  genteelmen  ! — come !  I  show  you  ze  letter 
writing  by  Christopher  Colombo! — write  it  himself! — write  it 
wis  his  own  hand ! — come !" 


REMARKABLE     PENMANSHIP.  201 

He  took  us  to  the  municipal  palace.  After  much  impres 
sive  fumbling  of  keys  and  opening  of  locks,  the  stained  and 
aged  document  was  spread  before  us.  The  guide's  eyes 
sparkled.  He  danced  about  us  and  tapped  the  parchment 
with  his  finger : 

"  What  I  tell  you,  genteelmen  !  Is  it  not  so  ?  See !  hand 
writing  Christopher  Colombo! — write- it  himself!" 

We  looked  indifferent — unconcerned.  The  doctor  examined 
the  document  very  deliberately,  during  a  painful  pause. — Then 
he  said,  without  any  show  of  interest : 

"  Ah — Ferguson — what — what  did  you  say  was  the  name 
of  the  party  who  wrote  this  ?" 

"  Christopher  Colombo  !  ze  great  Christopher  Colombo  !" 

Another  deliberate  examination. 

"Ah — did  he  write  it  himself,  or — or  how?" 


PENMANSHIP 


"He   write   it   himself! — Christopher   Colombo!  he's  own 

hand-writing,  write  by  himself!" 

Then  the  doctor  laid  the  document  down  and  said : 

"  Why,  I  have  seen  boys  in  America  only  fourteen  years 

old   that  could  write  better  than  that." 


292  IMPOTENT     QUESTIONS. 

"  But  zis  is  ze  great  Christo — 

"  I  don't  care  who  it  is !  It's  the  worst  writing  I  ever  saw. 
Now  you  musn't  think  you  can  impose  on  us  because  we  are 
strangers.  We  are  not  fools,  by  a  good  deal.  If  you  have 
got  any  specimens  of  penmanship  of  real  merit,  trot  them  out ! 
— and  if  you  haven't,  drive  on  !" 

We  drove  on.  The  guide  was  considerably  shaken  up,  but 
he  made  one  more  venture.  He  had  something  which  he 
thought  would  overcome  us.  He  said  : 

"  Ah,  genteelmen,  you  come  wis  me !  I  show  you  beautiful, 
O,  magnificent  bust  Christopher  Colombo  ! — splendid,  grand, 
magnificent !" 

He  brought  us  before  the  beautiful  bust — for  it  was  beauti 
ful — and  sprang  back  and  struck  an  attitude  : 

"  Ah,  look,  genteelmen  ! — beautiful,  grand, — bust  Christo 
pher  Colombo ! — beautiful  bust,  beautiful  pedestal !" 

The  doctor  put  up  his  eye-glass — procured  for  such  occa 
sions  : 

"  Ah — what  did  you  say  this  gentleman's  name  was  ?" 

"  Christopher  Colombo  ! — ze  great  Christopher  Colombo  !" 

'*  Christopher  Colombo — the  great  Christopher  Colombo. 
Well,  what  did  he  do  ?" 

"  Discover  America ! — discover  America,  Oh,  ze  devil !" 

"  Discover  America.  No — that  statement  will  hardly  wash. 
We  are  just  from  America  ourselves.  We  heard  nothing 
about  it.  Christopher  Colombo — pleasant  name — is — is  he 
dead  ?" 

"  Oh,  corpo  di  Baccho  ! — three  hundred  year !" 

"What  did  he  die  of?" 

"  I  do  not  know  ! — I  can  not  tell." 

"Small-pox,  think?" 

"  I  do  not  know,  genteelmen  ! — I  do  not  know  what  he  die 
of!" 

"Measles,  likely?" 

"  May  be — may  be — I  do  not  know — I  think  he  die  of  some 
things." 

"Parents  living?" 


LABOR     LOST. 


293 


"  Im-posseeble !" 

"  Ah — which  is  the  bust  and  which  is  the  pedestal  ?" 
"  Santa  Maria ! — zis  ze  bust ! — zi's  ze  pedestal !" 
"  Ah,  I  see,  I  see — happy  combination — very  happy  combi 
nation,  indeed.     Is — is  this  the  first  time  this  gentleman  was 
ever  on  a  bust  ?" 


ON    A    BUST. 


That  joke  was  lost  on  the  foreigner — guides  can  not  master 
the  subtleties  of  the  American  joke, 

We  have  made  it  interesting  for  this  Roman  guide.  Yester 
day  we  spent  three  or  four  hours  in  the  Vatican,  again,  that 
wonderful  world  of  curiosities.  We  came  very  near  express 
ing  interest,  sometimes — even  admiration — it  was  very  hard 
to  keep  from  it.  We  succeeded  though.  Nobody  else  ever 
did,  in  the  Vatican  museums.  The  guide  was  bewildered— 
non-plussed.  He  wralked  his  legs  off,  nearly,  hunting  up  ex 
traordinary  things,  and  exhausted  all  his  ingenuity  on  us,  but 


294  A     SURE     THING. 

it  was  a  failure  ;  we  never  showed  any  interest  in  any  thing. 
He  had  reserved  what  he  considered  to  be  his  greatest  wonder 
till  the  last — a  royal  Egyptian  mummy,  the  best  preserved  in 
the  world,  perhaps.  He  took  us  there.  He  felt  so  sure,  this 
time,  that  some  of  his  old  enthusiasm  came  back  to  him : 

"  See,  genteelmen  ! — Mummy  !     Mummy  !" 

The  eye-glass  came  up  as  calmly,  as  deliberately  as  ever. 

"  Ah, — Ferguson — what  did  I  understand  you  to  say  the 
gentleman's  name  was  ?" 

"  Name  ? — he  got  no  name  ! — Mummy  ! — 'Gyptian  mum- 
my!" 

"  Yes,  yes.     Born  here  ?" 

"  No !     ''Gyptian  mummy !" 

"Ah,  just  so.     Frenchman,  I  presume?" 

"  No  ! — not  Frenchman,  not  Roman  ! — born  in  Egypta  !" 

"  Born  in  Egypta.  Never  heard  of  Egypta  before.  For 
eign  locality,  likely.  Mummy — mummy.  How  calm  he  is — 
how  self-possessed.  Is,  ah — is  he  dead  ?" 

"  Oh,  sacre  bleu,  been  dead  three  thousan'  year !" 

The  doctor  turned  on  him  savagely  : 

"  Here,  now,  what  do  you  mean  by  such  conduct  as  this ! 
Playing  us  for  Chinamen  because  we  are  strangers  and  trying 
to  learn  !  Trying  to  impose  your  vile  second-hand  carcasses  on 
us! — thunder  and  lightning,  I've  a  notion  to — to — if  you've 
got  a  nice  fresh  corpse,  fetch  him  out ! — or  by  George  we'll 
brain  you  !" 

"We  make  it  exceedingly  interesting  for  this  Frenchman. 
However,  he  has  paid  us  back,  partly,  without  knowing  it. 
He  came  to  the  hotel  this  morning  to  ask  if  we  were  up,  and 
he  endeavored  as  well  as  he  could  to  describe  us,  so  that  the 
landlord  would  know  which  persons  he  meant.  He  finished 
with  the  casual  remark  that  we  were  lunatics.  The  observa 
tion  was  so  innocent  and  so  honest  that  it  amounted  to  a  very 
good  thing  for  a  guide  to  say. 

There  is  one  remark  (already  mentioned,)  which  never  yet 
has  failed  to  disgust  these  guides.  We  use  it  always,  when 
we  can  think  of  nothing  else  to  say.  After  they  have  ex- 


SUBTERRANEAN     MYSTERIES.  295 

Lausted  their  enthusiasm  pointing  out  to  us  and  praising  the 
beauties  of  some  ancient  bronze  image  or  broken-legged 
statue,  we  look  at  it  stupidly  and  in  silence  for  five,  ten, 
fifteen  minutes — as  long  as  we  can  hold  out,  in  fact — and  then 
ask: 

«  Is— is  he  dead  ?" 

That  conquers  the  serenest  of  them.  It  is  not  what  they 
are  looking  for — especially  a  new  guide.  Our  Roman  Fergu 
son  is  the  most  patient,  unsuspecting,  long-suffering  subject 
we  have  had  yet.  We  shall  be  sorry  to  part  with  him.  We 
have  enjoyed  his  society  very  much.  We  trust  he  has  enjoyed 
ours,  but  we  are  harassed  with  doubts. 

We  have  been  in  the  catacombs.  It  was  like  going  down 
into  a  very  deep  cellar,  only  it  was  a  cellar  which  had  no  end 
to  it.  The  narrow  passages  are  roughly  hewn  in  the  rock, 
and  on  each  hand  as  you  pass  along,  the  hollowed  shelves  are 
carved  out,  from  three  to  fourteen  deep ;  each  held  a  corpse 
once.  There  are  names,  and  Christian  symbols,  and  prayers, 
or  sentences  expressive  of  Christian  hopes,  carved  upon  nearly 
every  sarcophagus.  The  dates  belong  away  back  in  the  dawn 
of  the  Christian  era,  of  course.  Here,  in  these  holes  in  the 
ground,  the  first  Christians  sometimes  burrowed  to  escape  per 
secution.  They  crawled  out  at  night  to  get  food,  but  remained 
under  cover  in  the  day  time.  The  priest  told  us  that  St. 
Sebastian  lived  under  ground  for  some  time  while  he  was 
being  hunted  ;  he  went  out  one  day,  and  the  soldiery  discov 
ered  and  shot  him  to  death  with  arrows.  Five  or  six  of  the 
early  Popes — those  who  reigned  about  sixteen  hundred  years 
ago — held  their  papal  courts  and  advised  with  their  clergy  in 
the  bowels  of  the  earth.  Dm  ing  seventeen  years — from  A.  D. 
235  to  A.  D.  252 — the  Popes  did  not  appear  above  ground. 
Four  were  raised  to  the  great  office  during  that  period.  Four 
years  apiece,  or  thereabouts.  It  is  very  suggestive  of  the  un- 
healthiness  of  underground  graveyards  as  places  of  residence. 
One  Pope  afterward  spent  his  entire  pontificate  in  the  cata 
combs — eight  years.  Another  was  discovered  in  them  and 
murdered  in  the  episcopal  chair.  There  was  no  satisfaction 


296  RELIGIOUS     EXPLOSION. 

in  being  a  Pope  in  those  days.  There  were  too  many  annoy 
ances.  There  are  one  hundred  and  sixty  catacombs  under 
Rome,  each  with  its  maze  of  narrow  passages  crossing  and  re- 
crossing  each  other  and  each  passage  walled  to  the  top  with 
scooped  graves  its  entire  length.  A  careful  estimate  makes  the 
length  of  the  passages  of  all  the  catacombs  combined  foot  np 
nine  hundred  miles,  and  their  graves  number  seven  millions. 
We  did  not  go  through  all  the  passages  of  all  the  catacombs. 
We  were  very  anxious  to  do  it,  and  made  the  necessary  ar 
rangements,  but  our  too  limited  time  obliged  us  to  give  up  the 
idea.  So  we  only  groped  through  the  dismal  labyrinth  of 
St.  Callixtus,  under  the  Church  of  St.  Sebastian.  In  the 
various  catacombs  are  small  chapels  rudely  hewn  in  the  stones, 
and  here  the  early  Christians  often  held  their  religious  services 
by  dim,  ghostly  lights.  Think  of  m£tes  and  a  sermon  away 
down  in  those  tangled  caverns  under  ground  ! 

In  the  catacombs  were  buried  St.  Cecilia,  St.  Agnes,  and 
several  other  of  the  most  celebrated  of  the  saints.  In  the 
catacomb  of  St.  Callixtus,  St.  Bridget  used  to  remain  long 
hours  in  holy  contemplation,  and  St.  Charles  Borromeo  was 
wont  to  spend  whole  nights  in  prayer  there.  It  was  also  the 
scene  of  a  very  marvelous  thing. 

"  Here  the  heart  of  St.  Philip  Neri  was  so  inflamed  with  divine  love  as  to  burst 
his  ribs." 

I  find  that  grave  statement  in  a  book  published  in  New 
York  in  1858,  and  written  by  "  Rev.  William  II.  Neligan, 
LL.D.,  M.  A.,  Trinity  College,  Dublin  ;  Member  of  the  Ar 
chaeological  Society  of  Great  Britain."  Therefore,  I  believe 
it.  Otherwise,  I  could  not.  Under  other  circumstances  I 
should  have  felt  a  curiosity  to  know  what  Philip  had  for  din 
ner. 

This  author  puts  my  credulity  on  its  mettle  every  now  and 
then.  He  tells  of  one  St.  Joseph  Calasanctius  whose  house  in 
Rome  he  visited ;  he  visited  only  the  house — the  priest  has 
been  dead  two  hundred  years.  He  says  the  Virgin  Mary  ap 
peared  to  this  saint.  Then  he  continues : 


THE     LEGEND     OF     ARA     CCELI.  297 

"  His  tongue  and  his  heart,  which  were  found  after  nearly  a  century  to  be  whole, 
when  the  body  was  disinterred  before  his  canonization,  are  still  preserved  in  a 
glass  case,  and  after  two  centuries  the  heart  is  still  whole.  When  the  French 
troops  came  to  Rome,  and  when  Pius' VII.  was  carried  away  prisoner,  blood 
dropped  from  it." 

To  read  that  in  a  book  written  by  a  monk  far  back  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  would  surprise  no  one ;  it  would  sound  natural 
and  proper ;  but  when  it  is  seriously  stated  in  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  by  a  man  of  finished  education,  an 
LL.D.,  M.  A.,  and  an  Archaeological  magnate,  it  sounds 
strangely  enough.  Still,  I  would  gladly  change  my  unbelief 
for  Nelio;an's  faith,  and  let  him  make  the  conditions  as  hard  as 

O 

he  pleased. 

The  old  gentleman's  undoubting,  unquestioning  simplicity 
has  a  rare  freshness  about  it  in  these  matter-of-fact  railroading 
and  telegraphing  days.  Hear  him,  concerning  the  church  of 

Ara  Coeli : 

*\ 

"In  the  roof  of  the  church,  directly  above  the  high  altar,  is  engraved,  ' Eegina 
Cadi  laetare  Alleluia."  In  the  sixth  century  Rome  was  visited  by  a  fearful  pesti 
lence.  Gregory  the  Great  urged  the  people  to  do  penance,  and  a  general  proces 
sion  was  formed.  It  was  to  proceed  from  Ara  Coeli  to  St.  Peter's.  As  it  passed 
before  the  mole  of  Adrian,  now  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo,  the  sound  of  heavenly 
voices  was  heard  singing  (it  was  Easter  morn.)  '  Eegina  Cceli,  laetare !  alleluia ! 
quia  quern  meruisti  portare,  alleluia  !  resurrexit  sicut  dixit ;  alleluia  /'  The  Pontiff, 
carrying  in  his  hands  the  portrait  of  the  Virgin,  (which  is  over  the  high  altar  and 
is  said  to  have  been  painted  by  St.  Luke,)  answered,  with  the  astonished  people, 
'  Ora  pro  nobis  Deum,  alleluia  /'  At  the  same  time  an  angel  was  seen  to  put  up  a 
sword  in  a  scabbard,  and  the  pestilence  ceased  on  the  same  day.  There  are  four 
circumstances  which  confirm*  this  miracle:  the  annual  procession  which  takes 
place  in  the  western  church  on  the  feast  of  St.  Mark;  the  statue  of  St.  Michael, 
placed  on  the  mole  of  Adrian,  which  has  since  that  time  been  «alled  the  Castle  of 
St.  Angelo ;  the  antiphon  Regina  Cceli,  which  the  Catholic  church  sings  during 
paschal  time ;  and  the  inscription  in  the  church." 

*  The  italics  are  mine.— M.  T. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

FEOM  the  sanguinary  sports  of  the  Holy  Inquisition ;  the 
slaughter  of  the  Coliseum ;  and  the  dismal  tombs  of  the 
Catacombs,  I  naturally  pass  to  the  picturesque  horrors  of  the 
Capuchin  Convent.  AYe  stopped  a  moment  in  a  small  chapel 
in  the  church  to  admire  a  picture  of  St.  Michael  vanquishing 
Satan — a  picture  which  is  so  beautiful  that  I  can  not  but  think 
it  belongs  to  the  reviled  " Renaissance"  notwithstanding  I  be 
lieve  they  told  us  one  of  the  ancient  old  masters  painted  it — 
and  then  we  descended  into  the  vast  vault  underneath. 

Here  was  a  spectacle  for  sensitive  nerves !  Evidently  the 
old  masters  had  been  at  work  in  this  place.  There  were  six 
divisions  in  the  apartment,  and  each  division  was  ornamented 
with  a  style  of  decoration  peculiar  to  itself — and  these  decora 
tions  were  in  every  instance  formed  of  human  bones  !  There 
were  shapely  arches,  built  wholly  of  thigh  bones ;  there  were 
startling  pyramids,  built  wholly  of  grinning  skulls ;  there 
were  quaint  architectural  structures  of  various  kinds,  built  of 
shin  bones  and  the  bones  of  the  arm  ;  on  the  wall  were  elabo 
rate  frescoes,  whose  curving  vines  were  made  of  knotted  human 
vertebrae ;  whose  delicate  tendrils  were  made  of  sinews  and 
tendons ;  whose  flowers  were  formed  of  knee-caps  and  toe-nails. 
Every  lasting  portion  of  the  human  frame  was  represented  in 
these  intricate  designs  (they  were  by  Michael  Angelo,  I  think,) 
and  there  was  a  careful  finish  about  the  work,  and  an  attention 
to  details  that  betrayed  the  artist's  love  of  his  labors  as  well  as 
his  schooled  ability.  I  asked  the  good-natured  monk  who  ac 
companied  us,  who  did  this?  And  he  said,  "  We  did  it"- 
meaning  himself  and  his  brethren  up  stairs.  I  could  see  that 


LEGEND     OF     BROTHER     THOMAS. 


299 


the  old  friar  took  a  high  pride  in  his  curious  show.  We  made 
him  talkative  by  exhibiting  an  interest  we  never  betrayed  to 
guides. 

"  Who  were  these  people  ?" 

"  We — up  stairs — Monks  of  the  Capuchin  order — my  breth 


ren. 


VAULTS   OF   THE   CONVENT. 


"How  many  departed  monks  were  required  to  upholster 
these  six  parlors  ?" 

"  These  are  the  bones  of  four  thousand." 
"  It  took  a  long  time  to  get  enough  ?" 
"  Many,  many  centuries." 


300  LEGEND     OF     BROTHER     THOMAS. 

"  Their  different  parts  are  well  separated — skulls  in  one 
room,  legs  in  another,  ribs  in  another — there  would  be  stirring 
times  here  for  a  while  if  the  last  trump  should  blow.  Some 
of  the  brethren  might  get  hold  of  the  wrong  leg,  in  the  confu 
sion,  and  the  wrong  skull,  and  find  themselves  limping,  and 
looking  through  eyes  that  were  wider  apart  or  closer  together 
than  they  were  used  to.  You  can  not  tell  any  of  these  parties 
apart,  I  suppose  ?" 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  know  many  of  them." 

He  put  his  finger  on  a  skull.  "  This  was  Brother  Anselmo — 
dead  three  hundred  years — a  good  man." 

He  touched  another.  "  This  was  Brother  Alexander — dead 
two  hundred  and  eighty  years.  This  was  Brother  Carlo — dead 
about  as  long." 

Then  he  took  a  skull  and  held  it  in  his  hand,  and  looked  re 
flectively  upon  it,  after  the  manner  of  the  grave-digger  when 
he  discourses  of  Yorick. 

"  This,"  he  said,  "  was  Brother  Thomas.  He  was  a  young 
prince,  the  scion  of  a  proud  house  that  traced  its  lineage  back 
to  the  grand  old  days  of  Rome  well  nigh  two  thousand  years 
ago.  He  loved  beneath  his  estate.  His  family  persecuted  him ; 
persecuted  the  girl,  as  well.  They  drove  her  from  Rome ;  he 
followed ;  he  sought  her  far  and  wide ;  he  found  no  trace  of 
her.  He  came  back  and  offered  his  broken  heart  at  our  altar 
and  his  weary  life  to  the  service  of  God.  But  look  you. 
Shortly  his  father  died,  and  likewise  his  mother.  The  girl  re 
turned,  rejoicing.  She  sought  every  where  for  him  whose  eyes 
had  used  to  look  tenderly  into  hers  out  of  this  poor  skull,  but 
she  could  not  find  him.  At  last,  in  this  coarse  garb  we  wear, 
she  recognized  him  in  the  street.  He  knew  her.  It  was  too 
late.  He  fell  where  he  stood.  They  took  him  up  and  brought 
him  here.  He  never  spoke  afterward.  Within  the  week  he 
died.  You  can  see  the  color  of  his  hair — faded,  somewhat — 
by  this  thin  shred  that  clings  still  to  the  temple.  "  This," 
[taking  up  a  thigh  bone,]  "  was  his.  The  veins  of  this  leaf  in 
the  decorations  over  your  head,  were  his  finger-joints,  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  years  ago." 


A     FESTIVE     COMPANY     OF     THE     DEAD.  301 

This  business-like  way  of  illustrating  a  touching  Story  of  the 
heart  by  laying  the  several  fragments  of  the  lover  before  us 
and  naming  them,  was  as  grotesque  a  performance,  and  as 
ghastly,  as  any  I  ever  witnessed.  I  hardly  knew  whether  to 
smile  or  shudder.  There  are  nerves  and  muscles  in  our  frames 
whose  functions  and  whose  methods  of  working  it  seems  a  sort 
of  sacrilege  to  describe  by  cold  physiological  names  and  surgi 
cal  technicalities,  and  the  monk's  talk  suggested  to  me  some 
thing  of  this  kind.  Fancy  a  surgeon,  with  his  nippers  lifting 
tendons,  muscles  and  such  things  into  view,  out  of  the  complex 
machinery  of  a  corpse,  and  observing,  "  Now  this  little  nerve 
quivers — the  vibration  is  imparted  to  this  muscle — from  here  it 
is  passed  to  this  fibrous  substance ;  here  its  ingredients  are  sep 
arated  by  the  chemical  action  of  the  blood — one  part  goes  to 
the  heart  and  thrills  it  with  what  is  popularly  termed  emotion, 
another  part  follows  this  nerve  to  the  brain  and  communicates 
intelligence  of  a  startling  character — the  third  part  glides  along 
this  passage  and  touches  the  spring  connected  with  the  fluid 
receptacles  that  lie  in  the  rear  of  the  eye.  Thus,  by  this  sim 
ple  and  beautiful  process,  the  party  is  informed  that  his  mother 
is  dead,  and  he  weeps."  Horrible  ! 

I  asked  the  monk  if  all  the  brethren  up  stairs  expected  to  be 
put  in  this  place  when  they  died.  lie  answered  quietly : 

"  We  must  all  lie  here  at  last." 

See  what  one  can  accustom  himself  to. — The  reflection  that 
he  must  some  day  be  taken  apart  like  an  engine  or  a  clock,  or 
like  a  house  whose  owner  is  gone,  and  worked  up  into  arches 
and  pyramids  and  hideous  frescoes,  did  not  distress  this  monk 
in  the  least.  I  thought  he  even  looked  as  if  he  were  thinking, 
with  complacent  vanity,  that  his  own  skull  would  look  well  on 
top  of  the  heap  and  his  own  ribs  add  a  charm  to  the  frescoes 
which  possibly  they  lacked  at  present. 

Here  and  there,  in  ornamental  alcoves,  stretched  upon  beds 
of  bones,  lay  dead  and  dried-up  monks,  with  lank  frames 
dressed  in  the  black  robes  one  sees  ordinarily  upon  priests. 
We  examined  one  closely.  The  skinny  hands  were  clasped 
upon  the  breast ;  two  lustreless  tufts  of  hair  stuck  to  the  skull ; 


302 


THE  GREAT  VATICAN  MUSEUM. 


the  skin  was  brown  and  sunken ;  it  stretched  tightly  over  the 
cheek  bones  and  made  them  stand  out  sharply ;  the  crisp 
dead  eyes  were  deep  in  the  sockets ;  the  nostrils  were  painfully 

prominent,  the 
end  of  the  nose 
being  gone ; 
the  lips  had 
shriveled  away 
from  the  yel 
low  teeth :  and 
brought  down 
to  us  through 
the  circling 
years,  and  pet 
rified  there, 
was  a  weird 
laugh  a  full 
century  old ! 

It  was  the 
jolliest  laugh, 
but  yet  the 

most  dreadful,  that  one  can  imagine.  Surely,  I  thought,  it 
must  have  been  a  most  extraordinary  joke  this  veteran  pro 
duced  with  his  latest  breath,  that  he  has  not  got  done  laughing 
at  it  yet.  At  this  moment  I  saw  that  the  old  instinct  was 
strong  upon  the  boys,  and  I  said  we  had  better  hurry  to  St. 
Peter's.  They  were  trying  to  keep  from  asking,  "  Is — is  he 
dead  ?" 

It  makes  me  dizzy,  to  think  of  the  Vatican — of  its  wilder 
ness  of  statues,  paintings,  and  curiosities  of  every  description 
and  every  age.  The  "  old  masters  "  (especially  in'  sculpture,) 
fairly  swarm,  there.  I  can  not  write  about  the  Vatican.  I 
think  I  shall  never  remember  any  thing  I  saw  there  distinctly 
but  the  mummies,  and  the  Transfiguration,  by  Raphael,  and 
some  other  things  it  is  not  necessary  to  mention  now.  I  shall 
remember  the  Transfiguration  partly  because  it  was  placed  in 
a  room  almost  by  itself;  partly  because  it  is  acknowledged  by 


DRIED   CONVENT    FRUIT. 


THE     GREAT     VATICAN     MUSEUM. 


303 


all  to  be  the  first  oil  painting  in  the  world ;  and  partly  because 
it  was  wonderfully  beautiful.  The  colors  are  fresh  and  rich, 
the  "  expression,"  I  am  told,  is  fine,  the  "  feeling"  is  lively,  the 
"  tone "  is  good,  the  "  depth  "  is  profound,  and  the  width  is 
about  four  and  a  half  feet,  I  should  judge.  It  is  a  picture  that 
really  holds  one's  attention ;  its  beauty  is  fascinating.  It  is 
fine  enough  to  be  a  Renaissance.  A  remark  I  made  a  while 
ago  suggests  a  thought — and  a  hope.  Is  it  not  possible  that 
the  reason  I  find  such  charms  in  this  picture  is  because  it  is  out 
of  the  crazy  chaos  of  the  galleries?  If  some  of  the  others 
were  set  apart,  might  not  they  be  beautiful  ?  If  this  were  set 
in  the  midst  of  the  tempest  of  pictures  one  finds  in  the  vast 
galleries  of  the  Roman  palaces,  wrould  I  think  it  so  handsome  ? 
If,  up  to  this  time,  I  had  seen  only  one  "  old  master  "  in  each 
palace,  instead  of  acres  and  acres  of  walls  and  ceilings  fairly 
papered  with  them,  might  I  not  have  a  more  civilized  opinion 
of  the  old  masters  than  I  have  now  ?  I  think  so.  When  I 
was  a  school-boy  and  was  to  have  a  new  knife,  I  could  not  make 
up  my  mind  as  to  which  was  the 
prettiest  in  the  show-case,  and  I 
did  not  think  any  of  them  were 
particularly  pretty;  and  so  I 
chose  with  a  heavy  heart.  But 
when  I  looked  at  my  purchase, 
at  home,  where  no  glittering 
blades  came  into  competition 
with  it,  I  was  astonished  to  see 
how  handsome  it  was.  To  this 
day  my  new  hats  look  better  out 
of  the  shop  than  they  did  in  it 
with  other  new  hats.  It  begins 
to  dawn  upon  me,  now,  that  pos 
sibly,  what  I  have  been  taking 
for  uniform  ugliness  in  the  gal 
leries  may  be  uniform  beauty  af 
ter  all.  I  honestly  hope  it  is,  to  others,  but  certainly  it  is  not 
to  me.  Perhaps  the  reason  I  used  to  enjoy  going  to  the  Academy 


AT   THE   STORE. 


ARTIST     SINS     OF     OMISSION. 


of  Fine  Arts  in  New  York  was  because  there  were  but  a  few 
hundred  paintings  in  it,  and  it  did  not  surfeit  me  to  go  through 

the  list.  I  suppose  the  Academy 
was  bacon  and  beans  in  the 
Forty-Mile  Desert,  and  a  Euro 
pean  gallery  is  a  state  dinner  of 
thirteen  courses.  One  leaves  no 
sign  after  him  of  the  one  dish, 
but  the  thirteen  frighten  away 
his  appetite  and  give  him.  no 
satisfaction. 

There  is  one  thing  I  am  cer 
tain  of,  though.  "With  all  the 
Michael  Angelos,  the  Raphaels, 
the  Guidos  and  the  other  old 
masters,  the  sublime  history  of 
Home  remains  unpainted !  They 
AT  IIOME  painted  Virgins  enough,  and 

popes  enough  and  saintly  scare 
crows  enough,  to  people  Paradise,  almost,  and  these  things  are 
all  they  did  paint.  "  Nero  fiddling  o'er  burning  Rome,"  the 
assassination  of  Caesar,  the  stirring  spectacle  of  a  hundred 
thousand  people  bending  forward  with  rapt  interest,  in  the 
Coliseum,  to  see  two  skillful  gladiators  hacking  away  each  oth 
ers'  lives,  a  tiger  springing  upon  a  kneeling  martyr — these  and 
a  thousand  other  matters  which  we  read  of  with  a  living  inter 
est,  must  be  sought  for  only  in  books — not  among  the  rubbish 
left  by  the  old  masters — who  are  no  more,  I  have  the  satisfac 
tion  of  informing  the  public. 

They  did  paint,  and  they  did  carve  in  marble,  one  historical 
scene,  and  one  only,  (of  any  great  historical  consequence.) 
And  wThat  was  it  and  why  did  they  choose  it,  particularly  ?  It 
was  the  Rape  of  the  Sabines,  and  they  chose  it  for  the  legs  and 
busts. 

I  like  to  look  at  statues,  however,  and  I  like  to  look  at  pic 
tures,  also — even  of  monks  looking  up  in  sacred  ecstacy,  and 
monks  looking  down  in  meditation,  and  monks  skirmishing  for 


PAPAL     PROTECTION     OF     ART.  305 

something  to  eat — and  therefore  I  drop  ill  nature  to  thank  the 
papal  government  for  so  jealously  guarding  and  so  industri 
ously  gathering  up  these  things ;  and  for  permitting  me,  a 
stranger  arid  not  an  entirely  friendly  one,  to  roam  at  will  and 
unmolested  among  them,  charging  me  nothing,  and  only  re 
quiring  that  I  shall  behave  myself  simply  as  well  as  I  ought  to 
behave  in  any  other  man's  house.  I  thank  the  Holy  Father 
right  heartily,  and  I  wish  him  long  life  and  plenty  of  happiness. 

The  Popes  have  long  been  the  patrons  and  preservers  of 
art,  just  as  our  new,  practical  Republic  is  the  encourager  and 
upholder  of  mechanics.  In  their  Vatican  is  stored  up  all  that 
is  curious  and  beautiful  in  art ;  in  our  Patent  Office  is  hoarded 
all  that  is  curious  or  useful  in  mechanics.  When  a  man  in 
vents  a  new  style  of  horse-collar  or  discovers  a  new  and  supe 
rior  method  of  telegraphing,  our  government  issues  a  patent 
to  him  that  is  worth  a  fortune ;  when  a  man  digs  up  an  ancient 
statue  in  the  Campagna,  the  Pope  gives  him  a  fortune  in  gold 
coin.  We  can  make  something  of  a  guess  at  a  man's  character 
by  the  style  of  nose  he  carries  on  his  face.  The  Vatican  and 
the  Patent  Office  are  governmental  noses,  and  they  bear  a  deal 
of  character  about  them. 

The  guide  showed  us  a  colossal  statue  of  Jupiter,  in  the 
Vatican,  which  he  said  looked  so  damaged  and  rusty — so  like 
the  God  of  the  Vagabonds — because  it  had  but  recently  been 
dug  up  in  the  Campagna.  He  asked  how  much  we  supposed 
this  Jupiter  was  worth  ?  I  replied,  with  intelligent  promptness, 
that  he  was  probably  worth  about  four  dollars — may  be  four 
and  a  half.  "  A  hundred  thousand  dollars !"  Ferguson  said. 
Ferguson  said,  further,  that  the  Pope  permits  no  ancient  work 
of  this  kind  to  leave  his  dominions.  He  appoints  a  commis 
sion  to  examine  discoveries  like  this  and  report  upon  the  value ; 
then  the  Pope  pays  the  discoverer  one-half  of  that  assessed 
value  and  takes  the  statue.  He  said  this  Jupiter  was  dug  from 
a  field  which  had  just  been  bought  for  thirty-six  thousand  dol 
lars,  so  the  first  crop  was  a  good  one  for  the  new  farmer.  I  do 
not  know  whether  Ferguson  always  tells  the  truth  or  not,  but 
I  suppose  he  does.  I  know  that  an  exorbitant  export  duty  is 

20 


306  IMPROVED     SCRIPTURE. 

exacted  upon  all  pictures  painted  by  the  old  masters,  in  order 
to  discourage  the  sale  of  those  in  the  private  collections.  I  am 
satisfied,  also,  that  genuine  old  masters  hardly  exist  at  all,  in 
America,  because  the  cheapest  and  most  insignificant  of  them 
are  valued  at  the  price  of  a  fine  farm.  I  proposed  to  buy  a 
small  trifle  of  a  Kaphael,  myself,  but  the  price  of  it  was  eighty 
thousand  dollars,  the  export  duty  would  have  made  it  consid 
erably  over  a  hundred,  and  so  I  studied  on  it  awhile  and  con 
cluded  not  to  take  it. 

I  wish  here  to  mention  an  inscription  I  have  seen,  before  I 
forget  it : 

"  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  peace  on  earth  TO  MEN  OF 
GOOD  WILL  !"  It  is  not  good  scripture,  but  it  is  sound  Catholic 
and  human  nature. 

This  is  in  letters  of  gold  around  the  apsis  of  a  mosaic  group 
at  the  side  of  the  scala  santa,  church  of  St.  John  Lateran,  the 
Mother  and  Mistress  of  all  the  Catholic  churches  of  the  world. 
The  group  represents  the  Saviour,  St.  Peter,  Pope  Leo,  St.  Sil 
vester,  Constantine  and  Charlemagne.  Peter  is  giving  the 
pallium  to  the  Pope,  and  a  standard  to  Charlemagne.  The 
Saviour  is  giving  the  keys  to  St.  Silvester,  and  a  standard  to 
Constantine.  No  prayer  is  offered  to  the  Saviour,  who  seems 
to  be  of  little  importance  any  where  in  Home ;  but  an  inscrip 
tion  below  says,  "  Blessed  Peter,  give  life  to  Pope  Leo  and  victory 
to  King  Charles"  It  does  not  say,  "  Intercede  for  us,  through 
the  Saviour,  with  the  Father,  for  this  boon,"  but  "  Blessed  Pe 
ter,  give  it  us." 

In  all  seriousness — without  meaning  to  be  frivolous — without 
meaning  to  be  irreverent,  and  more  than  all,  without  meaning 
to  be  blasphemous, — I  state  as  my  simple  deduction  from  the 
things  I  have  seen  and  the  things  I  have  heard,  that  the  Holy 
Personages  rank  thus  in  Rome : 

First — "  The  Mother  of  God  " — otherwise  the  Virgin  Mary. 

Second— The  Deity. 

T/iird— Peter. 

Fourth — Some  twelve  or  fifteen  canonized  Popes  and  martyrs. 

Fifth, — Jesus  Christ  the  Saviour — (but  always  as  an  infant  in 
arms.) 


SCALE  OF  SACRED  HONORS.          307 

I  may  be  wrong  in  this — my  judgment  errs  often,  just  as  is 
the  case  with  other  men's — but  it  is  my  judgment,  be  it  good 
or  bad. 

Just  here  I  will  mention  something  that  seems  curious  to 
me.  There  are  no  "  Christ's  Churches "  in  Rome,  and  no 
"  Churches  of  the  Holy  Ghost,"  that  I  can  discover.  There 
are  some  four  hundred  churches,  but  about  a  fourth  of  them 
seem  to  be  named  for  the  Madonna  and  St.  Peter.  There  are 
so  many  named  for  Mary  that  they  have  to  be  distinguished  by 
all  sorts  of  affixes,  if  I  understand  the  matter  rightly.  Then 
we  have  churches  of  St.  Louis ;  St.  Augustine ;  St.  Agnes ;  St. 
Calixtus ;  St.  Lorenzo  in  Lucina ;  St.  Lorenzo  in  Damaso ;  St. 
Cecilia;  St.  Athanasius;  St.  Philip  Neri ;  St.  Catherine,  St. 
Dominico,  and  a  multitude  of  lesser  saints  whose  names  are 
not  familiar  in  the  world — and  away  down,  clear  out  of  the 
list  of  the  churches,  comes  a  couple  of  hospitals  :  one  of  them  is 
named  for  the  Saviour  and  the  other  for  the  Holy  Ghost ! 

Day  after  day  and  night  after  night  we  have  wandered  I 
among  the  crumbling  wonders  of  Home ;  day  after  day  and 
night  after  night  we  have  fed  upon  the  dust  and  decay  of  five- 
and-twenty  centuries — have  brooded  over  them  by  day  and 
dreampt  of  them  by  night  till  sometimes  we  seemed  molder- 
ing  away  ourselves,  and  growing  defaced  and  cornerless,  and 
liable  at  any  moment  to  fall  a  prey  to  some  antiquary  and  be 
patched  in  the  legs,  and  "  restored "  with  an  unseemly  nose, 
and  labeled  wrong  and  dated  wrong,  and  set  up  in  the  Vatican 
for  poets  to  drivel  about  and  vandals  to  scribble  their  names 
on  forever  and  forevermore. 

But  the  surest  way  to  stop  waiting  about  Home  is  to  stop. 
I  wished  to  write  a  real  "  guide-book  "  chapter  on  this  fascina 
ting  city,  but  I  could  not  do  it,  because  I  have  felt  all  the  time  / 
like  a  boy  in  a  candy-shop — there  was  every  thing  to  choose 
from,  and  yet  no  choice.  I  have  drifted  along  hopelessly  for  a 
hundred  pages  of  manuscript  without  knowing  where  to  com 
mence.  I  will  not  commence  at  all.  Our  passports  have  been 
examined.  We  will  go  to  Naples. 


OHAPTEE   XXIX. 

THE  ship  is  lying  here  in  the  harbor  of  Naples — quaran 
tined.  She  has  been  here  several  days  and  will  remain 
several  more.  We  that  came  by  rail  from  Rome  have  escaped 
this  misfortune.  Of  conrse.no  one  is  allowed  to  go  on  board 
the  ship,  or  come  ashore  from  her.  She  is  a  prison,  now.  The 
passengers  probably  spend  the  long,  blazing  days  looking  out 
from  under  the  awnings  at  Vesuvius  and  the  beautiful  city — 
and  in  swearing.  Think  of  ten  days  of  this  sort  of  pastime  ! — 
'"VVe  go  out  every  day  in  a  boat  and  request  them  to  come 
ashore.  It  soothes  them.  We  lie  ten  steps  from  the  ship  and 
tell  them  how  splendid  the  city  is ;  and  how  much  better  the 
hotel  fare  is  here  than  any  where  else  in  Europe ;  and  how 
cool  it  is ;  and  what  frozen  continents  of  ice  cream  there  are ; 
and  what  a  time  we  are  having  cavorting  about  the  country 
and  sailing  to  the  islands  in  the  Bay.  This  tranquilizes  them. 


ASCENT    OF    VESUVIUS. 

I  shall  remember  our  trip  to  Vesuvius  for  many  a  day — 
partly  because  of  its  sight-seeing  experiences,  but  chiefly  on 
account  of  the  fatigue  of  the  journey.  Two  or  three  of  us 
had  been  resting  ourselves  among  the  tranquil  and  beautiful 
scenery  of  the  island  of  Ischia,  eighteen  miles  out  in  the  har 
bor,  for  two  days ;  we  called  it  "  resting,"  but  I  do  not  remem 
ber  now  what  the  resting  consisted  of,  for  when  we  got  back 
to  Naples  we  had  not  slept  for  forty-eight  hours.  We  were 
just  about  to  go  to  bed  early  in  the  evening,  and  catch  up  on 


ASCENT     OF     VESUVIUS. 


309 


some  of  the  sleep  we  had  lost,  when  we  heard  of  this  Vesuvius 
expedition.  There  was  to  be  eight  of  us  in  the  party,  and  we 
were  to  leave  Naples  at  midnight.  We  laid  in  some  provis 
ions  for  the  trip,  engaged  carriages  to  take  us  to  Annunciation, 
and  then  moved  about 
the  city,  to  keep  awake, 
till  twelve.  We  got  away 
punctually,  and  in  the 
course  of  an  hour  and  a 
half  arrived  at  the  town 
of  Annunciation.  An 
nunciation  is  the  very 
last  place  under  the  sun. 
In  other  towns  in  Italy 
the  people  lie  around  qui 
etly  and  wait  for  you  to 
ask  them  a  question  or 
do  some  overt  act  that 
can  be  charged  for — but 
in  Annunciation  they 
have  lost  even  that  frag 
ment  of  delicacy ;  they 
seize  a  lady's  shawl  from 
a  chair  and  hand  it  to 
her  and  charge  a  penny ;  SOOTHING  THE  PILGRIMS. 

they  open  a  carriage  door, 

and  charge  for  it — shut  it  when  you  get  out,  and  charge  for  it ; 
they  help  you  to  take  off  a  duster — two  cents ;  brush  your 
clothes  and  make  them  worse  than  they  were  before — twro 
cents;  smile  upon  you — two  cents;  bow,  with  a  lick-spittle 
smirk,  hat  in  hand — two  cents  ;  they  volunteer  all  information, 
such  as  that  the  mules  will  arrive  presently — two  cents — warm 
day,  sir — two  cents — take  you  four  hours  to  make  the  ascent — 
two  cents.  And  so  they  go.  They  crowd  you — infest  you — 
swarm  about  you,  and  sweat  and  smell  offensively,  and  look 
sneaking  and  mean,  and  obsequious.  There  is  no  office  too 
degrading  for  them  to  perform,  for  money.  I  have  had  no  op- 


310  AN     UNLOVELY     COMMUNITY. 

portunity  to  find  out  any  thing  about  the  upper  classes  by  my 
own  observation,  but  from  what  I  hear  said  about  them  I  judge 
that  what  they  lack  in  one  or  two  of  the  bad  traits  the  canaille 
have,  they  make  up  in  one  or  two  others  that  are  worse.  How 
the  people  beg! — many  of  them  very  well  dressed,  too. 

I  said  I  knew  nothing  against  the  upper  classes  by  personal 
observation.  I  must  recall  it !  I  had  forgotten.  What  I  saw 
their  bravest  and  their  fairest  do  last  night,  the  lowest  multi 
tude  that  could  be  scraped  up  out  of  the  purlieus  of  Christen 
dom  would  blush  to  do,  I  think.  They  assembled  by  hundreds, 
and  even  thousands,  in  the  great  Theatre  of  San  Carlo,  to  do — 
what  ?  Why,  simply,  to  make  fun  of  an  old  woman — to  de 
ride,  to  hiss,  to  jeer  at  an  actress  they  once  worshipped,  but 
whose  beauty  is  faded  now  and  whose  voice  has  lost  its  former 
richness.  Every  body  spoke  of  the  rare  sport  there  was  to  be. 
They  said  the  theatre  would  be  crammed,  because  Frezzolini 
was  going  to  sing.  It  was  said  she  could  not  sing  well,  now, 
but  then  the  people  liked  to  see  her,  anyhow.  And  so  wre 
went.  And  every  time  the  woman  sang  they  hissed  and 
laughed — the  whole  magnificent  house — and  as  soon  as  she  left 
the  stage  they  called  her  on  again  with  applause.  Once  or 
twice  she  was  encored  five  and  six  times  in  succession,  and  re 
ceived  with  hisses  when  she  appeared,  and  discharged  with 
hisses  and  laughter  when  she  had  finished — then  instantly  en 
cored  and  insulted  again !  And  how  the  high-born  knaves 
enjoyed  it !  White-kidded  gentlemen  and  ladies  laughed  till 
the  tears  came,  and  clapped  their  hands  in  very  ecstacy  when 
that  unhappy  old  woman  would  come  meekly  out  for  the  sixth 
time,  with  uncomplaining  patience,  to  meet  a  storm  of  hisses ! 
It  was  the  cruelest  exhibition — the  most  wanton,  the  most  un 
feeling.  The  singer  would  have  conquered  an  audience  of 
American  rowdies  by  her  brave,  unflinching  tranquillity  (for 
she  answered  encore  after  encore,  and  smiled  and  bowed  pleas 
antly,  and  sang  the  best  she  possibly  could,  and  went  bowing 
oft',  through  all  the  jeers  and  hisses,  without  ever  losing  coun 
tenance  or  temper :)  and  surely  in  any  other  land  than  Italy 
her  sex  and  her  helplessness  must  have  been  an  ample  protec- 


MONKISH     MIRACLES.  311 

tion  to  her — she  could  have  needed  no  other.  Think  what  a 
multitude  of  small  souls  were  crowded  into  that  theatre  last 
night.  If  the  manager  could  have  filled  his  theatre  with  Nea 
politan  souls  alone,  without  the  bodies,  he  could  not  have 
cleared  less  than  ninety  millions  of  dollars.  What  traits  of 
character  must  a  man  have  to  enable  him  to  help  three  thou 
sand  miscreants  to  hiss,  and  jeer,  and  laugh  at  one  friendless 
old  woman,  and  shamefully  humiliate  her  ?  He  must  have  all 
the  vile,  mean  traits  there  are.  My  observation  persuades  me 
(I  do  not  like  to  venture  beyond  my  own  personal  observation,) 
that  the  upper  classes  of  Naples  possess  those  traits  of  charac 
ter.  Otherwise  they  may  be  very  good  people ;  I  can  not  say. 


ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS CONTINUED. 

In  this  city  of  Naples,  they  believe  in  and  support  one  of  the 
wretch edest  of  all  the  religious  impostures  one  can  find  in 
Italy — the  miraculous  liquefaction  of  the  blood  of  St.  Janua- 
rius.  Twice  a  year  the  priests  assemble  all  the  people  at  the 
Cathedral,  and  get  out  this  vial  of  clotted  blood  and  let  them 
see  it  slowly  dissolve  and  become  liquid — and  every  day  for 
eight  days,  this  dismal  farce  is  repeated,  while  the  priests  go 
among  the  crowd  and  collect  money  for  the  exhibition.  The 
first  day,  the  blood  liquefies  in  forty-seven  minutes — the  church 
is  crammed,  then,  and  time  must  be  allowed  the  collectors  to 
get  around  :  after  that  it  liquefies  a  little  quicker  and  a  little 
quicker,  every  day,  as  the  houses  grow  smaller,  till  on  the 
eighth  day,  with  only  a  few  dozens  present  to  see  the  miracle, 
it  liquefies  in  four  minutes. 

And  here,  also,  they  used  to  have  a  grand  procession,  of 
priests,  citizens,  soldiers,  sailors,  and  the  high  dignitaries  of  the 
City  Government,  once  a  year,  to  shave  the  head  of  a  made- 
up  Madonna — a  stuifed  and  painted  image,  like  a  milliner's 
dummy — whose  hair  miraculously  grew  and  restored  itself 
every  twelve  months.  They  still  kept  up  this  shaving  proces 
sion  as  late  as  four  or  five  years  ago.  It  was  a  source  of  great 
profit  to  the  church  that  possessed  the  remarkable  effigy,  and 


312  AN     ITALIAN     TRAIT. 

the  ceremony  of  the  public  barbering  of  her  was  always  car 
ried  out  with  the  greatest  possible  eclat  and  display — the  more 
the  better,  because  the  more  excitement  there  was  about  it  the 
larger  the  crowds  it  drew  and  the  heavier  the  revenues  it  pro 
duced — but  at  last  a  day  came  when  the  Pope  and  his  servants 
were  unpopular  in  Naples,  and  the  City  Government  stopped 
the  Madonna's  annual  show. 

There  we  have  two  specimens  of  these  Neapolitans — two  of 
the  silliest  possible  frauds,  which  half  the  population  religiously 
and  faithfully  believed,  and  the  other  half  either  believed  also  or 
else  said  nothing  about,  and  thus  lent  themselves  to  the  support 
of  the  imposture.  I  am  very  well  satisfied  to  think  the  whole 
population  believed  in  those  poor,  cheap  miracles — a  people 
who  want  two  cents  every  time  they  bow  to  you,  and  who 
abuse  a  woman,  are  capable  of  it,  I  think. 


ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED. 

These  Neapolitans  always  ask  four  times  as  much  money  as 
they  intend  to  take,  but  if  you  give  them  what  they  first  de 
mand,  they  feel  ashamed  of  themselves  for  aiming  so  low,  and 
immediately  ask  more.  When  money  is  to  be  paid  and  re 
ceived,  there  is  always  some  vehement  jawing  and  gesticula 
ting  about  it.  One  can  not  buy  and  pay  for  two  cents'  worth 
of  clams  without  trouble  and  a  quarrel.  One  "  course,"  in  a 
two-horse  carriage,  costs  a  franc — that  is  law — but  the  hack- 
man  always  demands  more,  on  some  pretence  or  other,  and  if 
he  gets  it  he  makes  a  new  demand.  It  is  said  that  a  stranger 
took  a  one-horse  carriage  for  a  course — tariff,  half  a  franc. 
He  gave  the  man  five  francs,  by  way  of  experiment.  He  de 
manded  more,  and  received  another  franc.  Again  he  demanded 
more,  and  got  a  franc — demanded  more,  and  it  was  refused. 
He  grew  vehement — was  again  refused,  and  became  noisy. 
The  stranger  said,  "  Well,  give  me  the  seven  francs  again,  and 
I  will  see  what  I  can  do  " — and  when  he  got  them,  he  handed 
the  hackman  half  a  franc,  and  he  immediately  asked  for  two 
cents  to  buy  a  drink  with.  It  may  be  thought  that  I  am  preju- 


AN     ITALIAN     TRAIT. 


31S 


diced.     Perhaps  I  am.     I  would  be  ashamed  of  myself  if  I 
were  not. 

ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS CONTINUED. 

Well,  as  I  was  saying,  we  got  our  mules  and  horses,  after  an 
hour  and  a  half  of  bargaining  with  the  population  of  Annun 
ciation,  and  started  sleepily  up  the  mountain,  with  a  vagrant 
at  each  mule's  tail  who  pretended  to  be  driving  the  brute  along, 


ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS. 


but  was  really  holding  on  and  getting  himself  dragged  up  in 
stead.  I  made  slow  headway  at  first,  but  I  began  to  get  dissat 
isfied  at  the  idea  of  paying  my  minion  five  francs  to  hold  my 


314  AN     ITALIAN     TRAIT. 

mule  back  by  the  tail  and  keep  him  from  going  up  the  hill, 
and  so  I  discharged  him.     I  got  along  faster  then. 

We  had  one  magnificent  picture  of  Naples  from  a  high  point 
on  the  mountain  side.  We  saw  nothing  but  the  gas  lamps,  of 
course — two-thirds  of  a  circle,  skirting  the  great  Bay — a  neck 
lace  of  diamonds  glinting  up  through  the  darkness  from  the 
remote  distance — less  brilliant  than  the  stars  overhead,  but 
more  softly,  richly  beautiful — and  over  all  the  great  city  the 
lights  crossed  and  recrossed  each  other  in  many  and  many  a 
sparkling  line  and  curve.  And  back  of  the  town,  far  around 
and  abroad  over  the  miles  of  level  campagna,  were  scattered 
rows,  and  circles,  and  clusters  of  lights,  all  glowing  like  so 
many  gems,  and  marking  where  a  score  of  villages  were  sleep 
ing.  About  this  time,  the  fellow  who  was  hanging  on  to  the 
tail  of  the  horse  in  front  of  me  and  practicing  all  sorts  of  un 
necessary  cruelty  upon  the  animal,  got  kicked  some  fourteen 
rods,  and  this  incident,  together  with  the  fairy  spectacle  of  the 
lights  far  in  the  distance,  made  me  serenely  happy,  and  I  was 
glad  I  started  to  Vesuvius. 


ASCENT   OF   MOUNT    VESUVIUS CONTINUED. 

This  subject  will  be  excellent  matter  for  a  chapter,  and  to 
morrow  or  next  day  I  will  write  it. 


OHAPTEE  XXX. 


ASCENT    OF   VESUVIUS CONTINUED. 

E  Naples  and  die."  "Well,  I  do  not  know  that  one 
would  necessarily  die  after  merely  seeing  it,  but  to 
attempt  to  live  there  might  turn  out  a  little  differently.  To 
see  Naples  as  we  saw  it  in  the  early  dawn  from  far  up  on  the 
side  of  Vesuvius,  is  to  see  a  picture  of  wonderful  beauty.  At 
that  distance  its  dingy  buildings  looked  white — and  so,  rank 
on  rank  of  balconies,  windows  and  roofs,  they  piled  them 
selves  up  from  the  blue  ocean  till  the  colossal  castle  of  St. 
Elmo  topped  the  grand  white  pyramid  and  gave  the  picture 
symmetry,  emphasis  and  completeness.  And  when  its  lilies 
turned  to  roses — when  it  blushed  under  the  sun's  first  kiss — it 
was  beautiful  beyond  all  description.  One  might  well  say, 
then,  "  See  Naples  and  die."  The  frame  of  the  picture  was 
charming,  itself.  In  front,  the  smooth  sea — a  vast  mosaic  of 
many  colors ;  the  lofty  islands  swimming  in  a  dreamy  haze  in 
the  distance ;  at  our  end  of  the  city  the  stately  double  peak  of 
Vesuvius,  and  its  strong  black  ribs  and  seams  of  lava  stretch 
ing  down  to  the  limitless  level  campagna — a  grejen  carpet  that 
enchants  the  eye  and  leads  it  on  and  on,  past  clusters  of  trees, 
and  isolated  houses,  and  snowy  villages,  until  it  shreds  out  in 
a  fringe  of  mist  and  general  vagueness  far  away.  It  is  from 
the  Hermitage,  there  on  the  side  of.  Vesuvius,  that  one  should 
"  see  Naples  and  die." 

But  do  not  go  within  the  walls  and  look  at  it  in  detail. 
That  takes  away  some  of  the  romance  of  the  thing.     The 


316  NAPLES     STREETS. 

people  are  filthy  in  their  habits,  and  this  makes  filthy  streets 
and  breeds  disagreeable  sights  and  smells.  There  never  was 
a  community  so  prejudiced  against  the  cholera  as  these  Nea 
politans  are.  But  they  have  good  reason  to  be.  The  cholera 
generally  vanquishes  a  Neapolitan  when  it  seizes  him,  because, 
you  understand,  before  the  doctor  can  dig  through  the  dirt 
and  get  at  the  disease  the  man  dies.  The  upper  classes  take  a 
sea-bath  every  day,  and  are  pretty  decent. 


BA.Y   OF   NAPLES. 

The  streets  are  generally  about  wide  enough  for  one  wagon, 
and  how  they  do  swarm  with  people !  It  is  Broadway  re 
peated  in  every  street,  in  every  court,  in  every  alley !  Such 
masses,  such  throngs,  such  multitudes  of  hurrying,  bustling, 
struggling  humanity !  We  never  saw  the  like  of  it,  hardly 
even  in  New  York,  I  think.  There  are  seldom  any  sidewalks, 
and  when  there  are,  they  are  not  often  wide  enough  to  pass  a 
man  on  without  caroming  on  him.  So  everybody  walks  in 
the  street — and  where  the  street  is  wide  enough,  carriages  are 
forever  dashing  along.  Why  a  thousand  people  are  not  run 
over  and  crippled  every  day  is  a  mystery  that  no  man  can 
solve. 

But  if  there  is  an  eighth  wonder  in  the  world,  it  must  be  the 
dwelling-houses  of  Naples.  I  honestly  believe  a  good  majority 


SHOT-TOWER     DWELLINGS.  317 

of  them  are  a  hundred  feet  high  !  And  the  solid  brick  walls 
are  seven  feet  through.  You  go  up  nine  flights  of  stairs  be 
fore  you  get  to  the  "  first"  floor.  No,  not  nine,  but  there  or 
thereabouts.  There  is  a  little  bird-cage  of  an  iron  railing  in 
front  of  every  window  clear  away  up,  up,  up,  among  the  eter 
nal  clouds,  where  the  roof  is,  and  there  is  always  somebody  look 
ing  out  of  every  window — people  of  ordinary  size  looking  out 
from  the  first  floor,  people  a  shade  smaller  from  the  second, 
people  that  look  a  little  smaller  yet  from  the  third — and  from 
thence  upward  they  grow  smaller  and  smaller  by  a  regularly 
graduated  diminution,  till  the  folks  in  the  topmost  windows 
seem  more  like  birds  in  an  uncommonly  tall  martin-box  than 
any  thing  else.  The  perspective  of  one  of  these  narrow 
cracks  of  streets,  with  its  rows  of  tall  houses  stretching  away 
till  they  come  together  in  the  distance  like  railway  tracks ;  its 
clothes-lines  crossing  over  at  all  altitudes  and  waving  their 
bannered  raggedness  over  the  swarms  of  people  below ;  and 
the  white-dressed  women  perched  in  balcony  railings  all  the 
way  from  the  pavement  up  to  the  heavens — a  perspective  like 
that  is  really  worth  going  into  Neapolitan  details  to  see. 


ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS CONTESTED. 

Naples,  with  its  immediate  suburbs,  contains  six  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  inhabitants,  but  I  am  satisfied  it 
covers  no  more  ground  than  an  American  city  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand.  It  reaches  up  into  the  air  infinitely  higher 
than  three  American  cities,  though,  and  there  is  where  the 
secret  of  it  lies.  I  will  observe  here,  in  passing,  that  the  con 
trasts  between  opulence  and  poverty,  and  magnificence  and 
misery,  are  more  frequent  and  more  striking  in  Naples  than  in 
Paris  even.  One  must  go  to  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  to  see 
fashionable  dressing,  splendid  equipages  and  stunning  liveries, 
and  to  the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine  to  see  vice,  misery,  hunger, 
rags,  dirt — but  in  the  thoroughfares  of  Naples  these  things  are 
all  mixed  together.  Naked  boys  of  nine  years  and  the  fancy- 
dressed  children  of  luxury ;  shreds  and  tatters,  and  brilliant 


318  SURPRISING     WAGES. 

uniforms;  jackass-carts  and  state-carriages;  beggars,  Princes 
and  Bishops,  jostle  each  other  in  every  street.  At  six  o'clock 
every  evening,  all  Naples  turns  out  to  drive  on  the  Riviere  di 
Chiaja,  (whatever  that  may  mean ;)  and  for  two  hours  one  may 
stand  there  and  see  the  motliest  arid  the  worst  mixed  proces 
sion  go  by  that  ever  eyes  beheld.  Princes  (there  are  more 
Princes  than  policemen  in  Naples — the  city  is  infested  with 
them) — Princes  who  live  up  seven  flights  of  stairs  and  don't 
own  any  principalities,  will  keep  a  carriage  and  go  hungry ; 
and  clerks,  mechanics,  milliners  and  strumpets  will  go  without 
their  dinners  and  squander  the  money  on  a  hack-ride  in  the 
Chiaja ;  the  rag-tag  and  rubbish  of  the  city  stack  themselves 
up,  to  the  number  of  twenty  or  thirty,  on  a  rickety  little  go- 
cart  hauled  by  a  donkey  not  much  bigger  than  a  cat,  and  they 
drive  in  the  Chiaja ;  Dukes  and  bankers,  in  sumptuous  car 
riages  and  with  gorgeous  drivers  and  footmen,  turn  out,  also, 
and  so  the  furious  procession  goes.  For  two  hours  rank  and 
wealth,  and  obscurity  and  poverty  clatter  along  side  by  side  in 
the  wild  procession,  and  then  go  home  serene,  happy,  covered 
with  glory ! 

I  was  looking  at  a  magnificent  marble  staircase  in  the 
King's  palace,  the  other  day,  which,  it  was  said,  cost  five  mil 
lion  francs,  and  I  suppose  it  did  cost  half  a  million,  may  be. 
I  felt  as  if  it  must  be  a  fine  thing  to  live  in  a  country  where 
there  was  such  comfort  and  such  luxury  as  this.  And  then  I 
stepped  out  musing,  and  almost  walked  over  a  vagabond  who 
was  eating  his  dinner  on  the  curbstone — a  piece  of  bread  and  a 
bunch  of  grapes.  When  I  found  that  this  mustang  was  clerk 
ing  in  a  fruit  establishment  (he  had  the  establishment  along 
with  him  in  a  basket,)  at  two  cents  a  day,  and  that  he  had  no 
palace  at  home  where  he  lived,  I  lost  some  of  my  enthusiasm 
concerning  the  happiness  of  living  in  Italy. 

This  naturally  suggests  to  me  a  thought  about  wages  here. 
Lieutenants  in  the  army  get  about  a  dollar  a  day,  and  com 
mon  soldiers  a  couple  of  cents.  I  only  know  one  clerk — he 
gets  four  dollars  a  month.  Printers  get  six  dollars  and  a  half 
a  month,  but  I  have  heard  of  a  foreman  who  gets  thirteen. 


MARKET     REPORT. 


319 


To  be  growing  suddenly  and  violently  rich,  as  this  man  is, 
naturally  makes  him  a  bloated  aristocrat.  The  airs  he  puts  on 
are  insufferable. 

And,  speaking  of  wages,  reminds  me  of  prices  of  merchan 
dise.  In  Paris  you  pay  twelve  dollars  a  dozen  for  Jouvin's 
best  kid  gloves ;  gloves 
of  about  as  good  quality 
sell  here  at  three  or  four 
dollars  a  dozen.  You 
pay  five  and  six  dollars 
apiece  for  fine  linen 
shirts  in  Paris ;  here  and 
in  Leghorn  you  pay  two 
and  a  half.  In  Mar 
seilles  you  pay  forty  dol 
lars  for  a  first-class  dress 
coat  made  by  a  good 
tailor,  but  in  Leghorn 
you  can  get  a  full  dress 
suit  for  the  same  money. 
Here  you  get  handsome 
business  suits  at  from 
ten  to  twenty  dollars, 
and  in  Leghorn  you  can 
get  an  overcoat  for 
fifteen  dollars  that  would 
cost  you  seventy  in  New  York.  Fine  kid  boots  are  worth 
eight  dollars  in  Marseilles  and  four  dollars  here.  Lyons  vel 
vets  rank  higher  in  America  than  those  of  Genoa.  Yet  the 
bulk  of  Lyons  velvets  you  buy  in  the  States  are  made  in 
Genoa  and  imported  into  Lyons,  where  they  receive  the  Lyons 
stamp  and  are  then  exported  to  America.  You  can  buy 
enough  velvet  in  Genoa  for  twenty-five  dollars  to  make  a  five 
hundred  dollar  cloak  in  New  York — so  the  ladies  tell  me. 
Of  course  these  things  bring  me  back,  by  a  natural  and  easy 
transition,  to  the 


MUSTANG. 


320 


ISLAND     OF     CAPRI. 


ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED. 

And  thus  the  wonderful  Blue  Grotto  is  suggested  to  me.     It 
is  situated  on  the  Island  of  Capri,  twenty-two  miles  from 


ISLAND   OF    CAPRI. 


Naples.  TVe  chartered  a  little  steamer  and  went  out  there. 
Of  course,  the  police  boarded  us  and  put  us  through  a  health 
examination,  and  inquired  into  our  politics,  before  they  would 
let  us  land.  The  airs  these  little  insect  Governments  put  on 
are  in  the  last  degree  ridiculous.  They  even  put  a  policeman 
on  board  of  our  boat  to  keep  an  eye  on  us  as  long  as  we  were 
in  the  Capri  dominions.  They  thought  we  wanted  to  steal  the 
grotto,  I  suppose.  It  was  worth  stealing.  The  entrance  to 
the  cave  is  four  feet  high  and  four  feet  wide,  and  is  in  the  face 
of  a  lofty  perpendicular  cliff — the  sea-wall.  You  enter  in 


SEA    WONDERS. 


321 


small  boats — and  a  tight  squeeze  it  is,  too.  You  can  not  go  in 
at  all  when  the  tide  is  up.  Once  within,  you  find  yourself  in 
an  arched  cavern  about  one  hundred  and  sixty  feet  long,  one 
hundred  and  twenty  wide,  and  about  seventy  high.  How 
deep  it  is  no  man  knows.  It  goes  down  to  the  bottom  of  the 
ocean.  The  waters  of  this  placid  subterranean  lake  are  the 
brightest,  loveliest  blue  that  can  be  imagined.  They  are  as 
transparent  as  plate  glass,  and  their  coloring  would  shame  the 
richest  sky  that  ever  bent  over  Italy.  No  tint  could  be  more 
ravishing,  no  lustre  more  superb.  Throw  a  stone  into  the 


BLUE   GROTTO. 


water,  and  the  myriad  of  tiny  bubbles  that  are  created  flash  out 
a  brilliant  glare  like  blue  theatrical  fires.  Dip  an  oar,  and  its 
blade  turns  to  splendid  frosted  silver,  tinted  with  blue.  Let  a 
man  jump  in,  and  instantly  he  is  cased  in  an  armor  more  gor 
geous  than  ever  kingly  Crusader  wore. 

Then  we  went  to  Ischia,  but  I  had  already  been  to  that 

21 


322  THE     POISONED     GROTTO. 

island  and  tired  myself  to  death  "  resting  "  a  couple  of  days 
and  studying  human  villainy,  with  the  landlord  of  the  Grande 
Sentinelle  for  a  model.  So  we  went  to  Procida,  and  from 
thence  to  Pozzuoli,  where  St.  Paul  landed  after  he  sailed  from 
Samos.  I  landed  at  precisely  the  same  spot  where  St.  Paul 
landed,  and  so  did  Dan  and  the  others.  It  was  a  remarkable 
coincidence.  St.  Paul  preached  to  these  people  seven  days 
before  he  started  to  Rome. 

Nero's  Baths,  the  ruins  of  Baise,  the  Temple  of  Serapis; 
Cumse,  where  the  Cumsen  Sybil  interpreted  the  oracles,  the 
Lake  Agnano,  with  its  ancient  submerged  city  still  visible  far 
down  in  its  depths — these  and  a  hundred  other  points  of  inter 
est  we  examined  with  critical  imbecility,  but  the  Grotto  of  the 
Dog  claimed  our  chief  attention,  because  we  had  heard  and 
read  so  much  about  it.  Every  body  has  written  about  the 
Grotto  del  Cane  and  its  poisonous  vapors,  from  Pliny  down 
to  Smith,  and  every  tourist  has  held  a  dog  over  its  floor  by  the 
legs  to  test  the  capabilities  of  the  place.  The  dog  dies  in  a 
minute  and  a  half — a  chicken  instantly.  As  a  general  thing, 
strangers  who  crawl  in  there  to  sleep  do  not  get  up  until  they 
are  called.  And  then  they  don't  either.  The  stranger  that 
ventures  to  sleep  there  takes  a  permanent  contract.  I  longed 
to  see  this  grotto.  I  resolved  to  take  a  dog  and  hold  him  my 
self;  suffocate  him  a  little,  and  time  him  ;  suffocate  him  some 
more  and  then  finish  him.  We  reached  the  grotto  at  about 
three  in  the  afternoon,  and  proceeded  at  once  to  make  the 
experiments.  But  now,  an  important  difficulty  presented 
itself.  We  had  no  doer. 


ASCENT   OF    VESUVIUS — CONTINUED. 

At  the  Hermitage  we  were  about  fifteen  or  eighteen  hun 
dred  feet  above  the  sea,  and  thus  far  a  portion  of  the  ascent 
had  been  pretty  abrupt.  For  the  next  two  miles  the  road  was 
a  mixture — sometimes  the  ascent  was  abrupt  and  sometimes  it 
was  not :  but  one  characteristic  it  possessed  all  the  time,  with 
out  failure — without  modification — it  was  all  uncompromis- 


THE     SUMMIT     BEACHED.  323 

ingly  and  unspeakably  infamous.  It  was  a  rough,  narrow 
trail,  and  led  over  an  old  lava  flow — a  black  ocean  which  was 
tumbled  into  a  thousand  fantastic  shapes — a  wild  chaos  of 
ruin,  desolation,  and  barrenness — a  wilderness  of  billowy  up 
heavals,  of  furious  whirlpools,  of  miniature  mountains  rent 
asunder — of  gnarled  and  knotted,  wrinkled  and  twisted 
masses  of  blackness  that  mimicked  branching  roots,  great 
vines,  trunks  of  trees,  all  interlaced  and  mingled  together : 
and  all  these  weird  shapes,  all  this  turbulent  panorama,  all 
this  stormy,  far-stretching  waste  of  blackness,  with  its  thrill 
ing  suggestiveness  of  life,  of  action,  of  boiling,  surging, 
furious  motion,  was  petrified  ! — all  stricken  dead  and  cold  in 
the  instant  of  its  maddest  rioting  ! — fettered,  paralyzed,  and 
left  to  glower  at  heaven  in  impotent  rage  for  evermore ! 

Finally  we  stood  in  a  level,  narrow  valley  (a  valley  that  had 
been  created  by  the  terrific  march  of  some  old  time  irruption) 
and  on  either  hand  towered  the  two  steep  peaks  of  Vesuvius. 
The  one  we  had  to  climb — the  one  that  contains  the  active 
volcano — seemed  about  eight  hundred  or  one  thousand  feet 
high,  and  looked  almost  too  straight-up-and-down  for  any 
man  to  climb,  and  certainly  no  mule  could  climb  it  with  a 
man  on  his  back.  Four  of  these  native  pirates  will  carry  you 
to  the  top  in  a  sedan  chair,  if  you  wish  it,  but  suppose  they 
were  to  slip  and  let  you  fall, — is  it  likely  that  you  would  ever 
stop  rolling  ?  Not  this  side  of  eternity,  perhaps.  We  left  the 
mules,  sharpened  our  finger-nails,  and  began  the  ascent  I  have 
been  writing  about  so  long,  at  twenty  minutes  to  six  in  the 
morning.  The  path  led  straight  up  a  rugged  sweep  of  loose 
chunks  of  pumice-stone,  and  for  about  every  two  steps  for 
ward  we  took,  we  slid  back  one.  It  was  so  excessively  steep 
that  we  had  to  stop,  every  fifty  or  sixty  steps,  and  rest  a  'mo 
ment.  To  see  our  comrades,  we  had  to  look  very  nearly 
straight  up  at  those  above  us,  and  very  nearly  straight  down 
at  those  below.  "We  stood  on  the  summit  at  last — it  had 
taken  an  hour  and  fifteen  minutes  to  make  the  trip. 

"What  we  saw  there  was  simply  a  circular  crater — a  circular 
ditch,  if  you  please — about  two  hundred  feet  deep,  and  four 


324  THE     CRATER. 

or  five  hundred  feet  wide,  whose  inner  wall  was  about  half  a 
mile  in  circumference.  In  the  centre  of  the  great  circus  ring 
thus  formed,  was  a  torn  and  ragged  upheaval  a  hundred  feet 
high,  all  snowed  over  with  a  sulphur  crust  of  many  and  many  a 
brilliant  and  beautiful  color,  and  the  ditch  inclosed  this  like 
the  moat  of  a  castle,  or  surrounded  it  as  a  little  river  does  a 
little  island,  if  the  simile  is  better.  The  sulphur  coating  of 
that  island  was  gaudy  in  the  extreme — all  mingled  together  in 
the  richest  confusion  were  red,  blue,  brown,  black,  yellow, 
white — I  do  not  know  that  there  was  a  color,  or  shade  of  a 
color,  or  combination  of  colors,  unrepresented — and  when  the 
sun  burst  through  the  morning  mists  and  fired  this  tinted 
magnificence,  it  topped  imperial  Vesuvius  like  a  jeweled 
crown ! 

The  crater  itself — the  ditch — was  not  so  variegated  in  color 
ing,  but  yet,  in  its  softness,  richness,  and  unpretentious  ele 
gance,  it  was  more  charming,  more  fascinating  to  the  eye. 
There  was  nothing  "  loud  "  about  its  well-bred  and  well-dressed 
look.  Beautiful?  One  could  stand  and  look  down  upon  it 
for  a  week  without  getting  tired  of  it.*  It  had  the  semblance 
of  a  pleasant  meadow,  whose  slender  grasses  and  whose  vel 
vety  mosses  were  frosted  with  a  shining  dust,  and  tinted  with 
palest  green  that  deepened  gradually  to  the  darkest  hue  of  the 
orange  leaf,  and  deepened  yet  again  into  gravest  brown,  then 
faded  into  orange,  then  into  brightest  gold,  and  culminated  in 
the  delicate  pink  of  a  new-blown  rose.  Where  portions  of  the 
meadow  had  sunk,  and  where  other  portions  had  been  broken 
up  like  an  ice-floe,  the  cavernous  openings  of  the  one,  and  the 
ragged  upturned  edges  exposed  by  the  other,  were  hung  with 
a  lace-work  of  soft-tinted  crystals  of  sulphur  that  changed 
their  deformities  into  quaint  shapes  and  figures  that  were  full 
of  grace  and  beauty. 

The  walls  of  the  ditch  were  brilliant  writh  yellow  banks 
of  sulphur  and  with  lava  and  pumice-stone  of  many  colors. 
No  fire  was  visible  any  where,  but  gusts  of  sulphurous  steam 
issued  silently  and  invisibly  from  a  thousand  little  cracks  and 
fissures  in  the  crater,  and  were  wafted  to  our  noses  with  every 


A     POWERFUL     TRADITION. 


325 


breeze.  But  so  long  as  we  kept  our  nostrils  buried  in  our 
handkerchiefs,  there  was  small  danger  of  suffocation. 

Some  of  the  boys  thrust  long  slips  of  paper  down  into  holes 
and  set  them  on  tire,  and  so  achieved  the  glory  of  lighting 
their  cigars  by  the  flames  of  Vesuvius,  and  others  cooked  eggs 
over  fissures  in  the  rocks  and  were  happy. 

The  view  from  the  summit  would  have  been-  superb  but  for 
the  fact  that  the  sun  could  only  pierce  the  mists  at  long  inter 
vals.  Thus  the  glimpses  we  had  of  the  grand  panorama  be 
low  were  only  fitful  and  unsatisfactory. 


THE   DESCENT. 

The  descent  of  the  mountain  was  a  labor  of  only  four 
minutes.  Instead  of 
stalking  down  the  rug 
ged  path  we  ascended, 
we  chose  one  which  was 
bedded  knee-deep  in 
loose  ashes,  and  ploughed 
our  way  with  prodigious 
strides  that  would  al 
most  have  shamed  the 
performance  of  him  of 
the  seven-league  boots. 

The  Vesuvius  of  to 
day  is  a  very  poor  affair 
compared  to  the  mighty 
volcano  of  Kilauea,  in 
the  Sandwich  Islands, 
but  I  am  glad  I  visited 


it. 
it. 


It  was  well  worth 


THE  DESCENT. 


It  is  said  that  during 
one  of  the  grand  erup 
tions  of  Vesuvius  it  discharged  massy  rocks  weighing  many 
tons  a  thousand  feet  into  the  air,  its  vast  jets  of  smoke  and 


326  A     POWERFUL     TRADITION. 

steam  ascended  thirty  miles  toward  the  firmament,  and  clouds 
of  its  ashes  were  wafted  abroad  and  fell  upon  the  decks  of 
ships  seven  hundred  and  fifty  miles  at  sea  !  I  will  take  the 
ashes  at  a  moderate  discount,  if  any  one  will  take  the  thirty 
miles  of  smoke,  but  I  do  not  feel  able  to  take  a  commanding 
interest  in  the  whole  story  by  myself. 


CHAPTEE   XXXI. 


THE   BURIED   CITY    OF    POMPEII. 

THEY  pronounce  it  Pom-^xzy-e.  I  always  had  an  idea  that 
you  went  down  into  Pompeii  with  torches,  by  the  way 
of  damp,  dark  stairways,  just  as  you  do  in  silver  mines,  and 
traversed  gloomy  tunnels  with  lava  overhead  and  some 
thing  on  either  hand  like  dilapidated  prisons  gouged  out  of  the 
solid  earth,  that  faintly  resembled  houses.  But  you  do  nothing 
of  the  kind.  Fully  one-half  of  the  buried  city,  perhaps,  is 
completely  exhumed  and  thrown  open  freely  to  the  light  of 
day ;  and  there  stand  the  long  rows  of  solidly-built  brick 
houses  (roofless)  just  as  they  stood  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
hot  with  the  flaming  sun ;  and  there  lie  their  floors,  clean- 
swept,  and  not  a  bright  fragment  tarnished  or  wanting  of  the 
labored  mosaics  that  pictured  them  with  the  beasts,  and  birds, 
and  flowers  which  we  copy  in  perishable  carpets  to-day ;  and 
there  are  the  Yenuses,  and  Bacchuses,  and  Adonises,  making 
love  and  getting  drunk  in  many-hued  frescoes  on  the  walls  of 
saloon  and  bed-chamber ;  and  there  are  the  narrow  streets  and 
narrower  sidewalks,  paved  with  flags  of  good  hard  lava,  the 
one  deeply  rutted  with  the  chariot-wheels,  and  the  other  with 
the  passing  feet  of  the  Pompeiians  of  by-gone  centuries  ;  and 
there  are  the  bake-shops,  the  temples,  the  halls  of  justice,  the 
bat! is,  the  theatres — all  clean-scraped  and  neat,  and  suggesting 
nothing  of  the  nature  of  a  silver  mine  away  down  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth.  The  broken  pillars  lying  about,  the  door- 
less  doorways  and  the  crumbled  tops  of  the  wilderness  of  walls, 


328 


THE    BURIED    CITY CURIOUS    FEATURES. 


were  wonderfully  suggestive  of  the  "  burnt  district "  in  one  of 
our  cities,  and  if  there  had  been  any  charred  timbers,  shattered 
windows,  heaps  of  debris,  and  general  blackness  and  smokiness 
about  the  place,  the  resemblance  would  have  been  perfect. 


But  no — the  sun  shines  as  brightly  down  on  old  Pompeii 
to-day  as  it  did  when  Christ  was  born  in  Bethlehem,  and  its 
streets  are  cleaner  a  hundred  times  than  ever  Pompeiian  saw 
them  in  her  prime.  I  know  whereof  I  speak — for  in  the  great, 
chief  thoroughfares  (Merchant  street  and  the  Street  of  For 
tune)  have  I  not  seen  with  my  own  eyes  how  for  two  hundred 
years  at  least  the  pavements  were  not  repaired ! — how  ruts 
five  and  even  ten  inches  deep  were  worn  into  the  thick  flag 
stones  by  the  chariot- wheels  of  generations  of  swindled  tax 
payers  ?  And  do  I  not  know  by  these  signs  that  Street  Commis 
sioners  of  Pompeii  never  attended  to  their  business,  and  that 
if  they  never  mended  the  pavements  they  never  cleaned  them  ? 
And,  besides,  is  it  not  the  inborn  nature  of  Street  Commis- 


THE     JUDGMENT     SEAT.  329 

sioners  to  avoid  tlieir  duty  whenever  they  get  a  chance  ?  I 
wish  I  knew  the  name  of  the  last  one  that  held  office  in  Pom 
peii  so  that  I  could  give  him  a  blast.  I  speak  with  feeling 
on  this  subject,  because  I  caught  my  foot  in  one  of  those  ruts, 
and  the  sadness  that  came  over  me  when  I  saw  the  first  poor 
skeleton,  with  ashes  and  lava  sticking  to  it,  was  tempered  by 
the  reflection  that  may  be  that  party  was  the  Street  Commis 
sioner. 

Xo — Pompeii  is  no  longer  a  buried  city.  It  is  a  city  of 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  roofless  houses,  and  a  tangled  maze 
of  streets  where  one  could  easily  get  lost,  without  a  guide,  and 
have  to  sleep  in  some  ghostly  palace  that  had  known  no  living 
tenant  since  that  awful  November  night,  of  eighteen  centuries 
ago. 

We  passed  through  the  gate  which  faces  the  Mediterranean, 
(called  the  "  Marine  Gate,")  and  by  the  rusty,  broken  image 
of  Minerva,  still  keeping  tireless  watch  and  ward  over  the 
possessions  it  was  powerless  to  save,  and  went  up  a  long  street 
and  stood  in  the  broad  court  of  the  Forum  of  Justice.  The 
floor  was  level  and  clean,  and  up  and  down  either  side  was  a 
noble  colonnade  of  broken  pillars,  with  their  beautiful  Ionic 
and  Corinthian  columns  scattered  about  them.  At  the  upper 
end  were  the  vacant  seats  of  the  Judges,  and  behind  them  we 
descended  into  a  dungeon  where  the  ashes  and  cinders  had 
found  two  prisoners  chained  on  that  memorable  November 
night,  and  tortured  them  to  death.  How  they  must  have 
tugged  at  the  pitiless  fetters  as  the  fierce  fires  surged  around 
them  ! 

Then  we  lounged  through  many  and  many  a  sumptuous 
private  mansion  which  we  could  not  have  entered  without  a 
formal  invitation  in  incomprehensible  Latin,  in  the  olden  time, 
when  the  owners  lived  there — and  we  probably  wouldn't  have 
got  it.  These  people  built  their  houses  a  good  deal  alike. 
The  floors  were  laid  in  fanciful  figures  wrought  in  mosaics  of 
many-colored  marbles.  At  the  threshold  your  eyes  fall  upon  a 
Latin  sentence  of  welcome,  sometimes,  or  a  picture  of  a  dog, 
with  the  legend  "  Beware  of  the  Dog,"  and  sometimes  a  pic- 


330 


FOOTPRINTS  OF  THE  DEPARTED. 


ture  of  a  bear  or  a  faun  with  no  inscription  at  all.  Then  you 
enter  a  sort  of  vestibule,  where  they  used  to  keep  the  hat-rack, 
I  suppose ;  next  a  room  with  a  large  marble  basin  in  the 
midst  and  the  pipes  of  a  fountain ;  on  either  side  are  bed 
rooms  ;  beyond  the  fountain  is  a  reception-room,  then  a  little 
garden,  dining-room,  and  so  forth  and  so  on.  The  floors  were 
all  mosaic,  the  walls  were  stuccoed,  or  frescoed,  or  ornamented 
with  bas-reliefs,  and  here  and  there  were  statues,  large  and 
small,  and  little  fish-pools,  and  cascades  of  sparkling  water  that 
sprang  from  secret  places  in  the  colonnade  of  handsome  pillars 
that  surrounded  the  court,  and  kept  the  flower-beds  fresh  and 


FORUM   OF   JUSTICE. — POMPEII. 


the  air  cool.  Those  Pompeiians  were  very  luxurious  in  their 
tastes  and  habits.  The  most  exquisite  bronzes  we  have  seen  in 
Europe,  came  from  the  exhumed  cities  of  lierculaneum  and 
Pompeii,  and  also  the  finest  cameos  arid  the  most  delicate 
engravings  on  precious  stones ;  their  pictures,  eighteen  or  nine 
teen  centuries  old,  are  often  much  more  pleasing  than  the  eel- 


.    FOOTPRINTS     OF     THE     DEPARTED.  331 

ebrated  rubbish  of  the  old  masters  of  three  centuries  ago. 
They  were  well  up  in  art.  From  the  creation  of  these  works 
of  the  first,  clear  up  to  the  eleventh  century,  art  seems  hardly 
to  have  existed  at  all — at  least  no  remnants  of  it  are  left — and 
it  was  curious  to  see  how  far  (in  some  things,  at  any  rate,)  these 
old  time  pagans  excelled  the  remote  generations  of  masters 
that  came  after  them.  The  pride  of  the  world  in  sculptures 
seem  to  be  the  Laocoon  and  the  Dying  Gladiator,  in  Rome. 
They  are  as  old  as  Pompeii,  were  dug  from  the  earth  like 
Pompeii ;  but  their  exact  age  or  who  made  them  can  only  be 
conjectured.  But  worn,  and  cracked,  without  a  history,  and 
with  the  blemishing  stains  of  numberless  centuries  upon  them, 
they  still  mutely  mock  at  all  efforts  to  rival  their  perfec 
tions. 

It  was  a  quaint  and  curious  pastime,  wandering  through  this 
old  silent  city  of  the  dead — lounging  through  utterly  deserted 
streets  where  thousands  and  thousands  of  human  beings  once 
bought  and  sold,  and  walked  and  rode,  and  made  the  place 
resound  with  the  noise  and  confusion  of  traffic  and  pleasure. 
They  were  not  lazy.  They  hurried  in  those  days.  We  had 
evidence  of  that.  There  was  a  temple  on  one  corner,  and  it 
was  a  shorter  cut  to  go  between  the  columns  of  that  temple 
from  one  street  to  the  other  than  to  go  around — and  behold 
that  pathway  had  been  worn  deep  into  the  heavy  flag-stone 
floor  of  the  building  by  generations  of  time-saving  feet !  They 
would  not  go  around  when  it  was  quicker  to  go  through.  We 
do  that  way  in  our  cities. 

Every  where,  you  see  things  that  make  you  wonder  how  old 
these  old  houses  were  before  the  night  of  destruction  came — 
things,  too,  which  bring  back  those  long  dead  inhabitants  and 
place  them  living  before  your  eyes.  For  instance  :  The  steps 
(two  feet  thick — lava  blocks)  that  lead  up  out  of  the  school, 
and  the  same  kind  of  steps  that  lead  up  into  the  dress  circle  of 
the  principal  theatre,  are  almost  worn  through  !  For  ages  the 
boys  hurried  out  of  that  school,  and  for  ages  their  parents 
hurried  into  that  theatre,  and  the  nervous  feet  that  have  been 
dust  and  ashes  for  eighteen  centuries  have  left  their  record  for 


332       FOOTPRINTS  OF  THE  DEPARTED. 

us  to  read  to-day.  I  imagined  I  could  see  crowds  of  gentle 
men  and  ladies  thronging  into  the  theatre,  with  tickets  for 
secured  seats  in  their  hands,  and  on  the  wall,  I  read  the  imag 
inary  placard,  in  infamous  grammar,  "POSITIVELY  No  FREE 
LIST,  EXCEPT  MEMBERS  OF  THE  PRESS  !"  Hanging  about  the 
doorway  (I  fancied,)  were  slouchy  Pompeiian  street-boys  utter 
ing  slang  and  profanity,  and  keeping  a  wary  eye  out  for  checks. 
I  entered  the  theatre,  and  sat  down  in  one  of  the  long  rows  of 
stone  benches  in  the  dress  circle,  and  looked  at  the  place  for 
the  orchestra,  and  the  ruined  stage,  and  around  at  the  wide 
sweep  of  empty  boxes,  and  thought  to  myself,  "  This  house 
won't  pay."  I  tried  to  imagine  the  music  in  full  blast,  the 
leader  of  the  orchestra  beating  time,  and  the  "  versatile  "  So- 
and-So  (who  had  "just  returned  from  a  most  successful  tour 
in  the  provinces  to  play  his  last  and  farewell  engagement  of 
positively  six  nights  only,  in  Pompeii,  previous  to  his  depart 
ure  for  Herculaneum,")  charging  around  the  stage  and  piling 
the  agony  mountains  high — but  I  could  not  do  it  with  such  a 
"  house  "  as  that ;  those  empty  benches  tied  my  fancy  down  to 
dull  reality.  I  said,  these  people  that  ought  to  be  here  have 
been  dead,  and  still,  and  moldering  to  dust  for  ages  and  ages, 
and  will  never  care  for  the  trifles  and  follies  of  life  any  more 
for  ever — "  Owing  to  circumstances,  etc.,  etc.,  there  will  not 
be  any  performance  to-night."  Close  down  the  curtain.  Put 
out  the  lights. 

And  so  I  turned  away  and  went  through  shop  after  shop  and 
store  after  store,  far  down  the  long  street  of  the  merchants, 
and  called  for  the  wares  of  Rome  and  the  East,  but  the  trades 
men  were  gone,  the  marts  were  silent,  and*  nothing  was  left 
but  the  broken  jars  all* set  in  cement  of  cinders  and  ashes  :  the 
wine  and  the  oil  that  once  had  filled  them  were  gone  with 
their  owners. 

In  a  bake-shop  was  a  mill  for  grinding  the  grain,  and  the 
furnaces  for  baking  the  bread :  and  they  say  that  here,  in  the 
same  furnaces,  the  exhumers  of  Pompeii  found  nice,  well 
baked  loaves  which  the  baker  had  not  found  time  to  remove 
from  the  ovens  the  last  time  he  left  his  shop,  because  circum 
stances  compelled  him  to  leave  in  such  a  hurry. 


FOOTPRINTS     OF    THE     DEPARTED.  333 

In  one  house  (the  only  building  in  Pompeii  which  no  woman 
is  now  allowed  to  enter,)  were  the  small  rooms  and  short  beds 
of  solid  masonry,  just  as  they  were  in  the  old  times,  and  on 
the  walls  were  pictures  which  looked  almost  as  fresh  as  if  they 
were  painted  yesterday,  but  which  no  pen  could  have  the 
hardihood  to  describe ;  and  here  and  there  were  Latin  inscrip 
tions — obscene  scintillations  of  wit,  scratched  by  hands  that 
possibly  were  uplifted  to  Heaven  for  succor  in  the  midst  of  a 
driving  storm  of  lire  before  the  night  was  done. 

In  one  of  the  principal  streets  was  a  ponderous  stone  tank, 
and  a  water-spout  that  supplied  it,  and  where  the  tired,  heated 
toilers  from  the  Campagna  used  to  rest  their  right  hands  when 
they  bent  over  to  put  their  lips  to  the  spout,  the  thick  stone 
was  worn  down  to  a  broad  groove  an  inch  or  two  deep. 
Think  of  the  countless  thousands  of  hands  that  had  pressed 
that  spot  in  the  ages  that  are  gone,  to  so  reduce  a  stone  that  is 
as  hard  as  iron  ! 

They  had  a  great  public  bulletin  board  in  Pompeii — a  place 
where  announcements  for  gladiatorial  combats,  elections,  and 
such  things,  were  posted — not  on  perishable  paper,  but  carved 
in  enduring  stone.  One  lady,  who,  I  take  it,  was  rich  and 
well  brought  up,  advertised  a  dwelling  or  so  to  rent,  with 
baths  and  all  the  modern  improvements,  and  several  hundred 
shops,  stipulating  that  the  dwellings  should  not  be  put  to 
immoral  purposes.  You  can  find  out  who  lived  in  many  a 
house  in  Pompeii  by  the  carved  stone  door-plates  affixed  to 
them :  and  in  the  same  way  you  can  tell  who  they  were  that 
occupy  the  tombs.  Every  where  around  are  things  that  reveal 
to  you  something  of  the  customs  and  history  of  this  forgotten 
people.  But  what  would  a  volcano  leave  of  an  American  city, 
if  it  once  rained  its  cinders  on  it  ?  Hardly  a  sign  or  a  symbol 
to  tell  its  story. 

In  one  of  these  long  Pompeiian  halls  the  skeleton  of  a  man 
was  found,  with  ten  pieces  of  gold  in  one  hand  and  a  large  key 
in  the  other.  He  had  seized  his  money  and  started  toward  the 
door,  but  the  fiery  tempest  caught  him  at  the  very  threshold, 
and  he  sank  down  and  died.  One  more  minute  of  precious 


334 


FOOTPRINTS    OF    THE     DEPARTED. 


time  would  have  saved  him.  I  saw  the  skeletons  of  a  man,  a 
woman,  and  two  young  girls.  The  woman  had  her  hands 
spread  wide  apart,  as  if  in  mortal  terror,  and  I  imagined  I 
could  still  trace  upon  her  shapeless  face  something  of  the 
expression  of  wild  despair  that  distorted  it  when  the  heavens 
rained  fire  in  these  streets,  so  many  ages  ago.  The  girls  and 
the  man  lay  with  their  faces  upon  their  arms,  as  if  they  had 
tried  to  shield  them  from  the  enveloping  cinders.  In  one 
apartment  eighteen  skeletons  were  found,  all  in  sitting  pos- 


IIOUSE. — POMPEII. 


tures,  and  blackened  places  on  the  walls  still  mark  their  shapes 
and  show  their  attitudes,  like  shadows.  One  of  them,  a 
woman,  still  wore  upon  her  skeleton  throat  a  necklace,  with 
her  name  engraved  upon  it — JULIE  DI  DIOMEDE. 


THE  BRAVE  MARTYR  TO  DUTY.       335 

But  perhaps  the  most  poetical  thing  Pompeii  lias  yielded  to 
modern  research,  was  that  grand  figure  of  a  Roman  soldier, 
clad  in  complete  armor  •  who>  true  to  his  duty,  true  to  his 
proud  name  of  a  soldier  of  Rome,  and  full  of  the  stern  courage 
which  had  given  to  that  name  its  glory,  stood  to  his  post 
by  the  city  gate,  erect  and  unflinching,  till  the  hell  that  raged 
around  him  burned  out  the  dauntless  spirit  it  could  not  con 
quer. 

We  never  read  of  Pompeii  but  we  think  of  tlrat  soldier ;  we 
can  not  write  of  Pompeii  without  the  natural  impulse  to  grant 
to  him  the  mention  he  so  well  deserves.  Let  us  remember 
that  he  was  a  soldier — not  a  policeman — and  so,  praise  him. 
Being  a  soldier,  he  staid, — because  the  warrior  instinct  for 
bade  him  to  fly.  Had  he  been  a  policeman  he  would  have 
staid,  also — because  he  would  have  been  asleep. 

There  are  not  half  a  dozen  flights  of  stairs  in  Pompeii,  and 
no  other  evidences  that  the  houses  were  more  than  one  story 
high.  The  people  did  not  live  in  the  clouds,  as  do  the  Vene 
tians,  the  Genoese  and  Neapolitans  of  to-day. 

We  came  out  from  under  the  solemn  mysteries  of  this  city 
of  the  Venerable  Past — this  city  which  perished,  with  all  its  old 
ways  and  its  quaint  old  fashions  about  it,  remote  centuries  ago, 
when  the  Disciples  were  preaching  the  new  religion,  which  is 
as  old  as  the  hills  to  us  now — and  went  dreaming  among  the 
trees  that  grow  over  acres  and  acres  of  its  still  buried  streets  and 
squares,  till  a  shrill  whistle  and  the  cry  of  "  All  aboard — last 
train  for  Naples  /"  woke  me  up  and  reminded  me  that  I  be 
longed  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  was  not  a  dusty  mummy, 
caked  with  ashes  and  cinders,  eighteen  hundred  years  old. 
The  transition  was  startling.  The  idea  of  a  railroad  train 
actually  running  to  old  dead  Pompeii,  and  whistling  irrever 
ently,  and  calling  for  passengers  in  the  most  bustling  and 
business-like  way,  was  as  strange  a  thing  as  one  could  imagine, 
and  as  unpoetical  and  disagreeable  as  it  was  strange. 

Compare  the  cheerful  life  and  the  sunshine  of  this  day  with 
the  horrors  the  younger  Pliny  saw  here,  the  9th  of  November, 
A.  D.  79,  when  he  was  so  bravely  striving  to  remove  his 


336  THE     PERISHABLE    NATURE     OF     FAME. 

mother  out  of  reach  of  harm,  while  she  begged  him,  with  all  a 
mother's  unselfishness,  to  leave  her  to  perish  and  save  himself. 

'  By  this  time  the  murky  darkness  had  so  increased  that  one  might  have  be 
lieved  himself  abroad  in  a  black  and  moonless  night,  or  in  a  chamber  where  all  the 
lights  had  been  extinguished.  On  every  hand  was  heard  the  complaints  of  women, 
the  wailing  of  children,  and  the  cries  of  men.  One  called  his  father,  another  his 
son,  and  another  his  wife,  and  only  by  their  voices  could  they  know  each  other. 
Many  in  their  despair  begged  that  death  would  come  and  end  their  distress. 

"  Some  implored  the  gods  to  succor  them,  and  some  believed  that  this  night  was 
the  last,  the  eternal  night  which  should  engulf  the  universe  1 

"  Even  so  it  seemed  to  me — and  I  consoled  myself  for  the  coming  death  with  the 
reflection:  BEHOLD,  THE  WORLD  is  PASSING  AWAY!" 

*  -x-  *  •&  *  *  •& 

After  browsing  among  the  stately  ruins  of  Rome,  of  Baise, 
of  Pompeii,  and  after  glancing  down  the  long  marble  ranks  of 
battered  and  nameless  imperial  heads  that  stretch  down  the 
corridors  of  the  Vatican,  one  thing  strikes  me  with  a  force  it 
never  had  before :  the  unsubstantial,  unlasting  character  of 
fame.  Men  lived  long  lives,  in  the  olden  time,  and  struggled 
feverishly  through  them,  toiling  like  slaves,  in  oratory,  in 
generalship,  or  in  literature,  and  then  laid  them  down  and 
died,  happy  in  the  possession  of  an  enduring  history  and  a 
deathless  name.  Well,  twenty  little  centuries  flutter  away, 
and  what  is  left  of  these  things  ?  A  crazy  inscription  on  a 
block  of  stone,  which  snuffy  antiquaries  bother  over  and  tangle 
up  and  make  nothing  out  of  but  a  bare  name  (which  they  spell 
wrong) — no  history,  no  tradition,  no  poetry — nothing  that  can 
give  it  even  a  passing  interest.  AVhat  may  be  left  of  General 
Grant's  great  name  forty  centuries  hence?  This — in  the 
Encyclopedia  for  A.  D.  5868,  possibly  : 

"  URIAH  S.  (or  Z.)  GRAUNT — popular  poet  of  ancient  times  in  the  Aztec  provinces 
of  the  United  States  of  British  America,  Some  authors  say  nourished  about  A.  D. 
742 ;  but  the  learned  Ah-ah  Foo-foo  states  that  he  was  a  cotemporary  of  Scharks- 
pyre,  the  English  poet,  and  flourished  about  A.  D.  1328,  some  three  centuries  after 
the  Trojan  war  instead  of  before  it.  He  wrote  '  Rock  me  to  Sleep,  Mother.'  " 

These  thoughts  sadden  me.     I  will  to  bed. 


OHAPTEE    XXXII. 


HOME,  again !  For  the  first  time,  in  many  weeks,  the 
ship's  entire  family  met  and  shook  hands  on  the 
quarter-deck.  They  had  gathered  from  many  points  of  the 
compass  and  from  many  lands,  but  not  one  was  missing ;  there 
was  no  tale  of  sickness  or  death  among  the  flock  to  dampen 
the  pleasure  of  the  reunion.  Once  more  there  was  a  full 
audience  on  deck  to  listen  to  the  sailors'  chorus  as  they  got  the 
anchor  up,  and  to  wave  an  adieu  to  the  land  as  we  sped  away 
from  Naples.  The  seats  were  full  at  dinner  again,  the  dom 
ino  parties  were  complete,  and  the  life  and  bustle  on  the  upper 
deck  in  the  fine  moonlight  at  night  was  like  old  times — old 
times  that  had  been  gone  weeks  only,  but  yet  they  were  weeks 
so  crowded  with  incident,  adventure  and  excitement,  that  they 
seemed  almost  like  years.  There  was  no  lack  of  cheerfulness 
on  board  the  Quaker  City.  For  once,  her  title  was  a  misno 
mer. 

At  seven  in  the  evening,  with  the  western  horizon  all  golden 
from  the  sunken  sun,  and  specked  with  distant  ships,  the  full 
moon  sailing  high  over  head,  the  dark  blue  of  the  sea  under 
foot,  and  a  strange  sort  of  twilight  affected  by  all  these  dif 
ferent  lights  and  colors  around  us  and  about  us,  we  sighted 
superb  Stromboli.  With  what  majesty  the  monarch  held  his 
lonely  state  above  the  level  sea !  Distance  clothed  him  in  a 
purple  gloom,  and  added  a  veil  of  shimmering  mist  that  so 
softened  his  rugged  features  that  we  seemed  to  see  him  through 
a  web  of  silver  gauze.  His  torch  was  out ;  his  fires  were 
smoldering ;  a  tall  column  of  smoke  that  rose  up  and  lost 

22 


338 


THE    "ORACLE"    AT    FAULT. 


itself  in  the  growing  moonlight  was  all  the  sign  he  gave  that 
he  was  a  living  Autocrat  of  the  Sea  and  not  the  spectre  of  a 
dead  one. 


At  two  in  the  morning  we  swept  through  the  Straits  of 
Messina,  and  so  bright  was  the  moonlight  that  Italy  on  the 
one  hand  and  Sicily  on  the  other  seemed  almost  as  distinctly 
visible  as  though,  we  looked  at  them  from  the  middle  of  a 

O 

street  wre  were  traversing.  The  city  of  Messina,  milk-white, 
and  starred  and  spangled  all  over  with  gaslights,  was  a  fairy 
spectacle.  A  great  party  of  us  were  on  deck  smoking  and 
making  a  noise,  and  waiting  to  see  famous  Scylla  and  Cha- 
rybdis.  And  presently  the  Oracle  stepped  out  with  his  eternal 
spy-glass  and  squared  himself  on  the  deck  like  another  Colossus 
of  Rhodes.  It  was  a  surprise  to  see  him  abroad  at  such  an 
hour.  Nobody  supposed  he  cared  anything  about  an  old  fable 
like  that  of  Scylla  and  Charybdis.  One  of  the  boys  said : 


AT     FAULT.  339 

"  Hello,  doctor,  what  are  you  doing  up  here  at  this  time  of 
night  ? — What  do  you  want  to  see  this  place  for  ?" 

"  What  do  /  want  to  see  this  place  for  ?  Young  man,  little 
do  you  know  me,  or  you  wouldn't  ask  such  a  question.  I  wish 
to  see  all  the  places  that's  mentioned  in  the  Bible." 

"  Stuff — this  place  isn't  mentioned  in  the  Bible." 

"  It  ain't  mentioned  in  the  Bible  ! — tiii$  place  ain't — well 
now,  what  place  is  this,  since  you  know  so  much  about  it  ?" 

"  Why  it's  Scylla  and  Charybdis." 

"  Scylla  and  Cha — confound  it,  I  thought  it  was  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah !" 

And  he  closed  up  his  glass  and  went  below.  The  above  is 
the  ship  story.  Its  plausibility  is  marred  a  little  by  the  fact 
that  the  Oracle  was  not  a  biblical  student,  and  did  not  spend 
much  of  his  time  instructing  himself  about  Scriptural  localities. 
—They  say  the  Oracle  complains,  in  this  hot  weather,  lately, 
that  the  only  beverage  in  the  ship  that  is  passable,  is  the 
butter.  He  did  not  mean  butter,  of  course,  but  inasmuch  as 
that  article  remains  in  a  melted  state  now  since  we  are  out  of 
ice,  it  is  fair  to  give  him  the  credit  of  getting  one  long  word  in 
the  right  place,  anyhow,  for  once  in  his  life.  He  said,  in 
Rome,  that  the  Pope  was  a  noble-looking  old  man,  but  he 
never  did  think  much  of  his  Iliad. 

We  spent  one  pleasant  day  skirting  along  the  Isles  of 
Greece.  They  are  very  mountainous.  Their  prevailing  tints 
are  gray  and  brown,  approaching  to  red.  Little  white  villages 
surrounded  by  trees,  nestle  in  the  valleys  or  roost  upon  the 
lofty  perpendicular  sea-walls. 

We  had  one  fine  sunset — a  rich  carmine  flush  that  suffused 
the  western  sky  and  cast  a  ruddy  glow  far  over  the  sea. — Fine 
sunsets  seem  to  be  rare  in  this  part  of  the  world — or  at  least, 
striking  ones.  They  are  soft,  sensuous,  lovely — they  are  ex 
quisite,  refined,  effeminate,  but  we  have  seen  no  sunsets  here 
yet  like  the  gorgeous  conflagrations  that  flame  in  the  track  of 
the  sinking  sun  in  our  high  northern  latitudes. 

But  what  were  sunsets  to  us,  with  the  wild  excitement  upon 
us  of  approaching  the  most  renowned  of  cities  !  What  cared 


340  SKIRTING    THE     ISLES    OF     GREECE. 

we  for  outward  visions,  when  Agamemnon,  Achilles,  and  a 
thousand  other  heroes  of  the  great  Past  were  marching  in 
ghostly  procession  through  our  fancies  ?  What  were  sunsets 
to  us,  who  were  about  to  live  and  breathe  and  walk  in  actual 
Athens ;  yea,  and  go  far  down  into  the  dead  centuries  and  bid 
in  person  for  the  slaves,  Diogenes  and  Plato,  in  the  public 
market-place,  or  gossip  with  the  neighbors  about  the  siege  of 
Troy  or  the  splendid  deeds  of  Marathon  ?  We  scorned  to  con 
sider  sunsets. 

We  arrived,  and  entered  the  ancient  harbor  of  the  Piraeus  at 
last.  We  dropped  anchor  within  half  a  mile  of  the  village. 
Away  off,  across  the  undulating  Plain  of  Attica,  could  be  seen 
a  little  square-topped  hill  with  a  something  on  it,  which  our 
glasses  soon  discovered  to  be  the  ruined  edifices  of  the  citadel 
of  the  Athenians,  and  most  prominent  among  them  loomed  the 
venerable  Parthenon.  So  exquisitely  clear  and  pure  is  this 
wonderful  atmosphere  that  every  column  of  the  noble  structure 
was  discernible  through  the  telescope,  and  even  the  smaller 
ruins  about  it  assumed  some  semblance  of  shape.  This  at  a 
distance  of  five  or  six  miles.  In  the  valley,  near  the  Acropolis, 
(the  square-topped  hill  before  spoken  of,)  Athens  itself  could 
be  vaguely  made  out  with  an  ordinary  lorgnette.  Every  body 
was  anxious  to  get  ashore  and  visit  these  classic  localities  as 
quickly  as  possible.  No  land  we  had  yet  seen  had  aroused 
such  universal  interest  among  the  passengers. 

But  bad  news  came.  The  commandant  of  the  Pirseus  came 
in  his  boat,  and  said  we  must  either  depart  or  else  get  outside 
the  harbor  and  remain  imprisoned  in  our  ship,  under  rigid 
quarantine,  for  eleven  days !  So  we  took  up  the  anchor  and 
moved  outside,  to  lie  a  dozen  hours  or  so,  taking  in  supplies, 
and  then  sail  for  Constantinople.  It  was  the  bitterest  disap 
pointment  we  had  yet  experienced.  To  lie  a  whole  day  in 
sight  of  the  Acropolis,  and  yet  be  obliged  to  go  away  without 
visiting  Athens !  Disappointment  was  hardly  a  strong  enough 
word  to  describe  the  circumstances. 

All  hands  were  on  deck,  all  the  afternoon,  with  books  and 
maps  and  glasses,  trying  to  determine  which  "narrow  rocky 


ANCIENT    ATHENS. 


341 


VIEW  OF  THE  ACROPOLIS,    LOOKING   WEST. 


ridge  "  was  the  Areopagus,  which  sloping  hill  the  Pnyx,  which 
elevation  the  Museum  Hill,  and  so  on.  And  we  got  things 
confused.  Discussion  became  heated,  and  party  spirit  ran 
high.  Church  members  were  gazing  with  emotion  upon  a  hill 
which  they 
said  was  the 
one  St.  Paul 
preached 
from,  and  an 
other  faction 
claimed  that 

that  hill  was     '     'fl*^  mill! IF 

Hym  e  1 1 11  s, 
and  another 
that  it  was 
Pente  1  i  con ! 
After  all  the 
trouble,  we 
could  be  cer 
tain  of  only  one  thing — the  square-topped  hill  was  the  Acrop 
olis,  and  the  grand  ruin  that  crowned  it  was  the  Parthenon, 
whose  picture  we  knew  in  infancy  in  the  school  books. 

We  inquired  of  every  body  who  came  near  the  ship,  whether 
there  were  guards  in  the  Piraeus,  whether  they  were  strict, 
what  the  chances  were  of  capture  should  any  of  us  slip  ashore, 
and  in  case  any  of  us  made  the  venture  and  were  caught,  what 
would  be  probably  done  to  us  ?  The  answers  wrere  discour 
aging  :  There  was  a  strong  guard  or  police  force  ;  the  Piraeus 
was  a  small  town,  and  any  stranger  seen  in  it  would  surely 
attract  attention — capture  would  be  certain.  The  commandant 
said  the  punishment  would  be  "  heavy ;"  when  asked  "  how 
heavy  ?"  he  said  it  would  be  "  very  severe  " — that  was  all  we 
could  get  out  of  him. 

At  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  when  most  of  the  ship's  company 
were  abed,  four  of  us  stole  softly  ashore  in  a  small  boat,  a 
clouded  moon  favoring  the  enterprise,  and  started  two  and  two, 
and  far  apart,  over  a  low  hill,  intending  to  go  clear  around  the 


342          RUNNING  THE  BLOCKADE. 

Piraeus,  out  of  the  range  of  its  police.  Picking  our  way  so 
stealthily  over  that  rocky,  nettle-grown  eminence,  made  me 
feel  a  good  deal  as  if  I  were  on  my  way  somewhere  to  steal 
something.  My  immediate  comrade  and  I  talked  in  an  under 
tone  about  quarantine  laws  and  their  penalties,  but  we  found 
nothing  cheering  in  the  subject.  I  was  posted.  Only  a  few 
days  before,  I  was  talking  with  our  captain,  and  he  mentioned 
the  case  of  a  man  w^ho  swam  ashore  from  a  quarantined  ship 
somewhere,  and  got  imprisoned  six  months  for  it ;  and  when 
he  was  in  Genoa  a  few  years  ago,  a  captain  of  a  quarantined 
ship  went  in  his  boat  to  a  departing  ship,  which  was  already 
outside  of  the  harbor,  and  put  a  letter  on  board  to  be  taken  to 
liis  family,  and  the  authorities  imprisoned  him  three  months 
for  it,  and  then  conducted  him  and  his  ship  fairly  to  sea,  and 
warned  him  never  to  show  himself  in  that  port  again  while  he 
lived.  This  kind  of  conversation  did  no  good,  further  than  to 
give  a  sort  of  dismal  interest  to  our  quarantine-breaking  expe 
dition,  and  so  we  dropped  it.  We  made  the  entire  circuit  of 
the  town  without  seeing  any  body  but  one  man,  who  stared  at 
us  curiously,  but  said  nothing,  and  a  dozen  persons  asleep  on 
the  ground  before  their  doors,  wThom  we  wralked  among  and 
never  wroke — but  we  woke  up  dogs  enough,  in  all  conscience — 
we  always  had  one  or  two  barking  at  our  heels,  and  several 
times  we  had  as  many  as  ten  and  twelve  at  once.  They  made 
such  a  preposterous  din  that  persons  aboard  our  ship  said  they 
could  tell  how  we  were  progressing  for  a  long  time,  and  wrhere 
we  were,  by  the  barking  of  the  dogs.  The  clouded  moon  still 
favored  us.  When  we  had  made  the  whole  circuit,  and  were 
passing  among  the  houses  on  the  further  side  of  the  town,  the 
moon  came  out  splendidly,  but  we  no  longer  feared  the  light. 
As  we  approached  a  well,  near  a  house,  to  get  a  drink,  the 
owner  merely  glanced  at  us  and  went  within.  He  left  the 
quiet,  slumbering  town  at  our  mercy.  I  record  it  here  proudly, 
that  we  didn't  do  any  thing  to  it. 

Seeing  no  road,  wre  took  a  tall  hill  to  the  left  of  the  distant 
Acropolis  for  a  mark,  and  steered  straight  for  it  over  all  ob 
structions,  and  over  .a  little  rougher  piece  of  country  than 


WE     BECOME     ROBBERS. 


343 


exists  any  where  else  outside  of  the  State  of  Nevada,  perhaps. 
Part  of  the  way  it  was  covered  with  small,  loose  stones — we 
trod  on  six  at  a  time,  and  they  all  rolled.  Another  part  of  it 
was  dry,  loose,  newly-ploughed  ground.  Still  another  part  of 
it  was  a  long  stretch  of  low  grape-vines,  which  were  tangle- 
some  and  troublesome,  and  which  we  took  to  be  brambles. 
The  Attic  Plain,  barring  the  grape-vines,  was  a  barren,  deso 
late,  unpoetical  waste — I  wonder  what  it  was  in  Greece's  Age 
of  Glory,  five  hundred  years  before  Christ  ? 

In  the  neighborhood  of  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when 
we  were  heated  with  fast  walking  and  parched  with  thirst, 
Denny  exclaimed,  "  Why,  these  weeds  are  grape-vines  !"  and 
in  live  minutes  we  had  a  score  of  bunches  of  larjje,  white,  deli- 

o    " 

cious  grapes,  and  were  reaching  down  for  more  when  a  dark 
shape  rose  mysteriously  up  out  of  the  shadows  beside  us  and 
said  "  IIo  !"  And  so  we  left. 

In  ten  minutes  more  we  struck  into  a  beautiful  road,  and 
unlike  some 
others  we 
had  stum 
bled  upon  at 
intervals,  it 
led  in  the 
right  direc 
tion.  AVe 
followed  it. 
It  was  broad, 
and  smooth, 
and  white — 
h  a  n  d  s  o  me 
and  in  per 
fect  repair, 
and  shaded 
on  both  sides 
for  a  mile  or 
so  with  sin 
gle  ranks  of 
trees,  and  also  with  luxuriant  vineyards. 


"no!" 


Twice  we  entered 


344 


AMONG    THE     GLORIES     OF    THE     PAST. 


and  stole  grapes,  and  the  second  time  somebody  shouted  at  us 
from  some  invisible  place.  Whereupon  we  left  again.  We 
speculated  in  grapes  no  more  on  that  side  of  Athens. 
'  Shortly  we  came  upon  an  ancient  stone  aqueduct,  built  upon 
arches,  and  from  that  time  forth  we  had  ruins  all  about  us — 
we  were  approaching  our  journey's  end.  We  could  not  see 
the  Acropolis  now  or  the  high  hill,  either,  and  I  wanted  to 
follow  the  road  till  we  were  abreast  of  them,  but  the  others 
overruled  me,  and  we  toiled  laboriously  up  the  stony  hill  im 
mediately  in  our  front — and  from  its  summit  saw  another— 
climbed  it  and  saw  another  !  It  was  an  hour  of  exhausting 
work.  Soon  we  came  upon  a  row  of  open  graves,  cut  in  the 

solid  rock — (for  a  while 
one  of  them  served  Soc 
rates  for  a  prison) — we 
passed  around  the  shoul 
der  of  the  hill,  and  the 
citadel,  in  all  its  ruined 
magnificence,  burst  upon 
us  !  We  hurried  across 
the  ravine  and  up  a 
winding  road,  and  stood 
on  the  old  Acropolis,  with 
the  prodigious  walls  of 
the  citadel  towering 
above  our  heads.  We 
did  not  stop  to  inspect 
their  massive  blocks  of 
marble,  or  measure  their 
height,  or  guess  at  their 
extraordinary  thickness, 
but  passed  at  once 
through  a  great  arched 
passage  like  a  railway 

tunnel,  and  went  straight  to  the  gate  that  leads  to  the  ancient 
temples.  It  was  locked  !  So,  after  all,  it  seemed  that  we  were 
sot  to  see  the  great  Parthenon  face  to  face.  We  sat  down  and 


THE    ASSAULT. 


AMONG     THE     GLORIES    OF    THE     PAST.  345 

held  a  council  of  war.  Result:  the  gate  was  only  a  flimsy 
structure  of  wood — we  would  break  it  down.  It  seemed  like 
desecration,  but  then  we  had  traveled  far,  and  our  necessities 
were  urgent.  We  could  not  hunt  up  guides  and  keepers — we 
must  be  on  the  ship  before  daylight.  So  we  argued.  This 
was  all  very  fine,  but  when  we  came  to  break  the  gate,  we 
could  not  do  it.  We  moved  around  an  angle  of  the  wall  and 
found  a  low  bastion — eight  feet  high  without — ten  or  twelve 
within.  Denny  prepared  to  scale  it,  and  we  got  ready  to  fol 
low.  By  dint  of  hard  scrambling  he  finally  straddled  the  top, 
but  some  loose  stones  crumbled  away  and  fell  with  a  crash 
into  the  court  within.  There  was  instantly  a  banging  of  doors 
and  a  shout.  Denny  dropped  from  the  wall  in  a  twinkling, 
and  we  retreated  in  disorder  to  the  gate.  Xerxes  took  that 
mighty  citadel  four  hundred  and  eighty  years  before  Christ, 
when  his  five  millions  of  soldiers  and  camp-followers  followed 
him  to  Greece,  and  if  we  four  Americans  could  have  remained 
unmolested  five  minutes  longer,  we  would  have  taken  it  too. 

The  garrison  had  turned  out — four  Greeks.  We  clamored 
at  the  gate,  and  they  admitted  us.  [Bribery  and  corruption.] 

We  crossed  a  large  court,  entered  a  great  door,  and  stood 
iipon  a  pavement  of  purest  white  marble,  deeply  worn  by  foot 
prints.  Before  us,  in  the  flooding  moonlight,  rose  the  noblest 
ruins  we  had  ever  looked  upon — the  Propylse ;  a  small  Temple 
of  Minerva;  the  Temple  of  Hercules,  and  the  grand  Par 
thenon.  [We  got  these  names  from  the  Greek  guide,  who 
didn't  seem  to  know  more  than  seven  men  ought  to  know.] 
These  edifices  were  all  built  of  the  whitest  Pentelic  marble, 
but  have  a  pinkish  stain  upon  them  now.  Where  any  part  is 
broken,  however,  the  fracture  looks  like  fine  loaf  sugar.  Six 
caryatides,  or  marble  women,  clad  in  flowing  robes,  support 
the  portico  of  the  Temple  of  Hercules,  but  the  porticos  and 
colonnades  of  the  other  structures  are  formed  of  massive  Doric 
and  Ionic  pillars,  whose  flutings  and  capitals  are  still  measur 
ably  perfect,  notwithstanding  the  centuries  that  have  gone 
over  them  and  the  sieges  they  have  suffered.  The  Parthenon, 
originally,  was  two  hundred  and  twenty-six  feet  long,  one  hun- 


346 


AMONG     THE     GLORIES     OF     THE     PAST. 


dred  wide,  and  seventy  high,  and  had  two  rows  of  great  col 
umns,  eight  in  each,  at  either  end,  and  single  rows  of  «6eventeen 


CARYATIDES. 


each  down  the  sides,  and  was  one  of  the  most  graceful  and 
beautiful  edifices  ever  erected. 

Most  of  the  Parthenon's  imposing  columns  are  still  standing, 
but  the  roof  is  gone.  It  was  a  perfect  building  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago,  when  a  shell  dropped  into  the  Yenetian 
magazine  stored  here,  and  the  explosion  which  followed 
wrecked  and  unroofed  it.  I  remember  but  little  about  the 
Parthenon,  and  I  have  put  in  one  or  two  facts  and  figures  for 
the  use  of  other  people  with  short  memories.  Got  them  from 
the  guide-book. 

As  we  wandered  thoughtfully  down  the  marble-paved  length 
of  this  stately  temple,  the  scene  about  us  was  strangely  im 
pressive.  Here  and  there,  in  lavish  profusion,  were  gleaming 
white  statues  of  men  and  women,  propped  against  blocks  of 


A     FAIRY     VISION.  347 

marble,  some  of  them  armless,  some  without  legs,  others  head 
less — but  all  looking  mournful  in  the  moonlight,  and  start- 
lingly  human  !  They  rose  up  and  confronted  the  midnight 
intmder  on  every  side — they  stared  at  him  with  stony  eyes 
from  unlooked-for  nooks  and  recesses ;  they  peered  at  him 
over  fragmentary  heaps  far  down  the  desolate  corridors  ;  they 
barred  his  way  in  the  midst  of  the  broad  forum,  and  solemnly 
pointed  with  handless  arms  the  way  from  the  sacred  lane ;  and 
through  the  roofless  temple  the  moon  looked  clown,  and  banded 
the  floor  and  darkened  the  scattered  fragments  and  broken 
statues  with  the  slanting  shadows  of  the  columns. 

What  a  world  of  ruined  sculpture  was  about  us  !  Set  up  in 
rows — stacked  up  in  piles — scattered  broadcast  over  the  wide 
area  of  the  Acropolis — were  hundreds  of  crippled  statues  of  all 
sizes  and  of  the  most  exquisite  workmanship ;  and  vast  frag 
ments  of  marble  that  once  belonged  to  the  entablatures,  cov 
ered  with  bas-reliefs  representing  battles  and  sieges,  ships  of 
war  with  three  and  four  tiers  of  oars,  pageants  and  processions 
— every  thing  one  could  think  of.  History  says  that  the  tem 
ples  of  the  Acropolis  were  filled  with  the  noblest  works  of 
Praxiteles  and  Phidias,  arid  of  many  a  great  master  in  sculp 
ture  besides — and  surely  these  elegant  fragments  attest  it. 

We  walked  out  into  the  grass-grown,  fragment-strewn  court 
beyond  the  Parthenon.  It  startled  us,  every  now  and  then,  to 
see  a  stony  white  face  stare  suddenly  up  at  us  out  of  the  grass 
with  its  dead  eyes.  The  place  seemed  alive  with  ghosts.  I 
half  expected  to  see  the  Athenian  heroes  of  twenty  centin-ies 
ago  glide  out  of  the  shadows  and  steal  into  the  old  temple 
they  knew  so  well  and  regarded  with  such  boundless  pride. 

The  full  moon  was  riding  high  in  the  cloudless  heavens, 
now.  We  sauntered  carelessly  and  unthinkingly  to  the  edge 
of  the  lofty  battlements  of  the  citadel,  and  looked  down — a 
vision !  And  such  a  vision !  Athens  by  moonlight !  The 
prophet  that  thought  the  splendors  of  the  New  Jerusalem 
were  revealed  to  him,  surely  saw  this  instead  !  It  lay  in  the 
level  plain  right  under  our  feet — all  spread  abroad  like  a  pic 
ture — and  we  looked  down  upon  it  as  we  might  have  looked 


348  A     FAIRY    VISION — MARS     HILL. 

from  a  balloon.  We  saw  no  semblance  of  a  street,  but  every 
house,  every  window,  every  clinging  vine,  every  projection, 
was  as  distinct  and  sharply  marked  as  if  the  time  were  noon 
day  ;  and  yet  there  was  no  glare,  no  glitter,  nothing  harsh  or 
repulsive — the  noiseless  city  was  flooded  with  the  mellowest 
light  that  ever  streamed  from  the  moon,  and  seemed  like  some 
living  creature  wrapped  in  peaceful  slumber.  On  its  further 
side  was  a  little  temple,  whose  delicate  pillars  and  ornate  front 
glowed  with  a  rich  lustre  that  chained  the  eye  like  a  spell ;  and 
nearer  by,  the  palace  of  the  king  reared  its  creamy  walls  out 
of  the  midst  of  a  great  garden  of  shrubbery  that  was  flecked 
all  over  with  a  random  shower  of  amber  lights — a  spray  of 
golden  sparks  that  lost  their  brightness  in  the  glory  of  the 
moon,  and  glinted  softly  upon  the  sea  of  dark  foliage  like  the 
pallid  stars  of  the  milky-way.  Overhead  the  stately  columns, 
majestic  still  in  their  ruin — under  foot  the  dreaming  city — in 
the  distance  the  silver  sea — not  on  the  broad  earth  is  there  an 
other  picture  half  so  beautiful ! 

As  we  turned  and  moved  again  through  the  temple,  I  wished 
'that  the  illustrious  men  who  had  sat  in  it  in  the  remote  ages 
could  visit  it  again  and  reveal  themselves  to  our  curious  eyes 
—Plato,  Aristotle,  Demosthenes,  Socrates,  Phocion,  Pytha 
goras,  Euclid,  Pindar,  Xenophon,  Herodotus,  Praxiteles  and 
Phidias,  Zeuxis  the  painter.  What  a  constellation  of  cele 
brated  names  !  But  more  than  all,  I  wished  that  old  Diogenes, 
groping  so  patiently  with  his  lantern,  searching  so  zealously 
for  one  solitary  honest  man  in  all  the  world,  might  meander 
along  and  stumble  on  our  party.  I  ought  not  to  say  it,  may 
be,  but  still  I  suppose  he  would  have  put  out  his  light. 

We  left  the  Parthenon  to  keep  its  watch  over  old  Athens,  as 
it  had  kept  it  for  twenty-three  hundred  years,  and  went  and 
stood  outside  the  walls  of  the  citadel.  In  the  distance  was  the 
ancient,  but  still  almost  perfect  Temple  of  Theseus,  and  close 
by,  looking  to  the  west,  was  the  Bema,  from  whence  Demos 
thenes  thundered  his  philippics  and  fired  the  wavering  patri 
otism  of  his  countrymen.  To  the  right  was  Mars  Hill,  where 
the  Areopagus  sat  in  ancient  times,  and  where  St.  Paul  defined 


ST.    PAUL'S   CRITICISM.  3-i9 

his  position,  and  below  was  the  market-place  where  he  "  dis 
puted  daily"  with  the  gossip-loving  Athenians.  We  climbed 
the  stone  steps  St.  Paul  ascended,  and  stood  in  the  square-cut 
place  he  stood  in,  and  tried  to  recollect  the  Bible  account  of 
the  matter — but  for  certain  reasons,  I  could  not  recall  the 
words.  I  have  found  them  since  : 

"  Now  while  Paul  waited  for  them  at  Athens,  his  spirit  was  stirred  in  him, 
when  he  saw  the  city  wholly  given  up  to  idolatry. 

"Therefore  disputed  he  in  the  synagogue  with  the  Jews,  and  with  the  devout 
persons,  and  in  the  market  daily  with  them  that  met  with  him. 

********* 

"And  they  took  him  and  brought  him  unto  Areopagus,  saying,  May  we  know 
what  this  new  doctrine  whereof  thou  speakest  is  ? 

********* 

"  Then  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of  Mars  hill,  and  said,  Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  per 
ceive  that  in  all  things  ye  are  too  superstitious  ; 

"  For  as  I  passed  by  and  beheld  your  devotions,  I  found  an  altar  with  this  in 
scription  :  To  THE  UNKNOWN  G-OD.  Whom,  therefore,  ye  ignorantly  worship,  him 
declare  I  unto  you." — Acts,  ch.  xvii." 

It  occurred  to  us,  after  a  while,  that  if  we  wanted  to  get 
home  before  daylight  betrayed  us,  we  had  better  be  moving. 
So  we  hurried  away.  When  far  on  our  road,  we  had  a  parting 
view  of  the  Parthenon,  with  the  moonlight  streaming  through 
its  open  colonnades  and  touching  its  capitals  with  silver.  As 
it  looked  then,  solemn,  grand,  and  beautiful  it  will  always 
remain  in  our  memories. 

As  we  marched  along,  we  began  to  get  over  our  fears,  and 
ceased  to  care  much  about  quarantine  scouts  or  any  body  else. 
We  grew  bold  and  reckless  ;  and  once,  in  a  sudden  burst  of 
courage,  I  even  threw  a  stone  at  a  dog.  It  was  a  pleasant 
reflection,  though,  that  I  did  not  hit  him,  because  his  master 
might  just  possibly  have  been  a  policeman.  Inspired  by  this 
happy  failure,  my  valor  became  utterly  uncontrollable,  and  at 
intervals  I  absolutely  whistled,  though  on  a  moderate  key. 
But  boldness  breeds  boldness,  and  shortly  I  plunged  into  a 
vineyard,  in  the  full  light  of  the  moon,  and  captured  a  gallon 
of  superb  grapes,  not  even  minding  the  presence  of  a  peasant 
who  rode  by  on  a  mule.  Denny  and  Birch  followed  my  ex- 


350 


RETREATING     IN     GOOD     ORDER. 


ample.  Now  I  had  grapes  enough  for  a  dozen,  but  then 
Jackson  was  all  swollen  up  with  courage,  too,  and  he  was 
obliged  to  enter  a  vineyard  presently.  The  first  bunch  he 

seized  brought  trouble.  A 
frowsy,  bearded  brigand 
sprang  into  the  road  with 
a  shout,  and  flourished  a 
musket  in  the  light  of  the 
moon  !  We  sidled  toward 
the  Piraeus — not  running, 
you  understand,  but  only 


WE   SIDLED,    NOT   RAX. 

advancing  with  celerity.  The  brigand  shouted  again,  but  still 
we  advanced.  It  was  getting  late,  and  we  had  no  time  to  fool 
away  on  every  ass  that  wanted  to  drivel  Greek  platitudes  to  us. 
We  would  just  as  soon  have  talked  with  him  as  not  if  we  had 
not  been  in  a  hurry.  Presently  Denny  said,  "  Those  fellows 
are  following  us !" 

We  turned,  and,  sure  enough,  there  they  were — three  ftin- 
tastic  pirates  armed  with  guns.  We  slackened  our  pace  to  let 
them  come  up,  and  in  the  meantime  I  got  out  my  cargo  of 
grapes  and  dropped  them  firmly  but  reluctantly  into  the  shad 
ows  by  the  wayside.  But  I  was  not  afraid.  I  only  felt  that 
it  was  not  right  to  steal  grapes.  And  all  the  more  so  when  the 
owner  was  around — and  not  only  around,  but  with  his  friends 
around  also.  The  villains  came  up  and  searched  a  bundle  Dr. 


TRAVELING     IN     MILITARY    STYLE.  351 

Birch  had  in  his  hand,  and  scowled  upon  him  when  they  found 
it  had  nothing  in  it  but  some  holy  rocks  from  Mars  Hill,  and 
these  were  not  contraband.  They  evidently  suspected  him  of 
playing  some  wretched  fraud  upon  them,  and  seemed  half  in 
clined  to  scalp  the  party.  But  finally  they  dismissed  us  with 
a  warning,  couched  in  excellent  Greek,  I  suppose,  and  dropped 
tranquilly  in  our  wake.  When  they  had  gone  three  hundred 
yards  they  stopped,  and  we  went  on  rejoiced.  But  behold, 
another  armed  rascal  came  out  of  the  shadows  and  took  their 
place,  and  followed  us  two  hundred  y%rds.  Then  he  delivered 
us  over  to  another  miscreant,  who  emerged  from  some  myste 
rious  place,  and  he  in  turn  to  another !  For  a  mile  and  a  half 
our  rear  was  guarded  all  the  while  by  armed  men.  I  never 
traveled  in  so  much  state  before  in  all  my  life. 

It  was  a  good  while  after  that  before  we  ventured  to  steal 
any  more  grapes,  and  when  we  did  we  stirred  up  another 
troublesome  brigand,  and  then  we  ceased  all  further  specu 
lation  in  that  line.  I  suppose  that  fellow  that  rode  by  on  the 
mule  posted  all  the  sentinels,  from  Athens  to  the  Piraeus, 
about  us. 

Every  field  on  that  long  route  was  watched  by  an  armed 
sentinel,  some  of  whom  had  fallen  asleep,  no  doubt,  but  were 
on  hand,  nevertheless.  This  shows  what  sort  of  a  country 
modern  Attica  is — a  community  of  questionable  characters. 
These  men  were  not  there  to  guard  their  possessions  against 
strangers,  but  against  each  other ;  for  strangers  seldom  visit 
Athens  and  the  Piraeus,  and  when  they  do,  they  go  in  day 
light,  and  can  buy  all  the  grapes  they  want  for  a  trifle.  The 
modern  inhabitants  are  confiscators  and  falsifiers  of  high  re 
pute,  if  gossip  speaks  truly  concerning  them,  and  I  freely 
believe  it  does. 

Just  as  the  earliest  tinges  of  the  dawn  flushed  the  eastern 
sky  and  turned  the  pillared  Parthenon  to  a  broken  harp  hung 
in  the  pearly  horizon,  we  closed  our  thirteenth  mile  of  weary, 
round-about  marching,  and  emerged  upon  the  sea-shore  abreast 
the  ships,  with  our  usual  escort  of  fifteen  hundred  Pirsean  dogs 
howling  at  our  heels.  We  hailed  a  boat  that  was  two  or  three 


352 


ANCIENT     ACROPOLIS. 


hundred  yards  from  shore,  and  discovered  in  a  moment  that  it 
was  a  police-boat  on  the  lookout  for  any  quarantine-breakers 
that  might  chance  to  be  abroad.  So  we  dodged — we  were 
used  to  that  by  this  time — and  when  the  scouts  reached  the 
spot  we  had  so  lately  occupied,  we  were  absent.  They  cruised 
along  the  shore,  but  in  the  wrong  direction,  and  shortly  our 
own  boat  issued  from  the  gloom  and  took  us  aboard.  They 

had  heard  our 
signal  on  the 
ship.  We 
rowed  noise 
lessly  away, 
and  before 
the  police- 
boat  came  in 
sight  again, 
we  were  safe 
at  home  once 
more. 

Four  more 
of  our  pas 
sengers  wrere 
anxious  to 
visit  Athens, 
and  started 
half  an  hour 
after  we  re 
turned  ;  but 

they  had  not  been  ashore  five  minutes  till  the  police  discovered 
and  chased  them  so  hotly  that  they  barely  escaped  to  their  boat 
again,  and  that  was  all.  They  pursued  the  enterprise  no  further. 
We  set  sail  for  Constantinople  to-day,  but  some  of  us  little 
care  for  that.  We  have  seen  all  there  was  to  see  in  the  old 
city  that  had  its  birth  sixteen  hundred  years  before  Christ  was 
born,  and  was  an  old  town  before  the  foundations  of  Troy  were 
laid — and  saw  it  in  its  most  attractive  aspect.  Wherefore, 
why  should  we  worry  ? 


ANCIENT   ACROPOLIS. 


RUNNING    THE     BLOCKADE. 


353 


Two  other  passengers  ran  the  blockade  successfully  last 
night.  So  we  learned  this  morning.  They  slipped  away  so 
quietly  that  they  were  not  missed  from  the  ship  for  several 
hours.  They  had  the  hardihood  to  inarch  into  the  Piraeus  in 
the  early  dusk  and  hire  a  carriage.  They  ran  some  danger  of 
adding  two  or  three  months'  imprisonment  to  the  other  nov 
elties  of  their  Holy  Land  Pleasure  Excursion.  I  admire 
"  cheek."  *  But  they  went  and  came  safely,  and  never  walked 
a  step. 

*  Quotation  from  the  Pilgrims. 


» 


CHAPTEE    XXXIII. 


inKOM  Athens  all  through  the  islands  of  the  Greciaiv.  Arch 
ipelago,  we  saw  little  but  forbidding  sea-walls  and  bar 
ren  hills,  sometimes  surmounted  by  three  or  four  graceful 
columns  of  some  ancient  temple,  lonely  and  deserted — a  fitting 
symbol  of  the  desolation  that  has  come  upon  all  Greece  in 
these  latter  ages.  We  saw  no  ploughed  fields,  very  few  vil 
lages,  no  trees  or  grass  or  vegetation  of  any  kind,  scarcely,  and 
hardly  ever  an  isolated  house.  Greece  is  a  bleak,  unsmiling 
desert,  without  agriculture,  manufactures  or  commerce,  appa 
rently.  What  supports  its  poverty-stricken  people  or  its  Gov 
ernment,  is  a  mystery. 

I  suppose  that  ancient  Greece  and  modern  Greece  compared, 
furnish  the  most  extravagant  contrast  to  be  found  in  history. 
George  I.,  an  infant  of  eighteen,  and  a  scraggy  nest  of  foreign 
office  holders,  sit  in  the  places  of  Themistocles,  Pericles,  and 
the  illustrious  scholars  and  generals  of  the  Golden  Age  of 
Greece.  The  fleets  that  were  the  wonder  of  the  world  when 
the  Parthenon  was  new,  are  a  beggarly  handful  of  fishing- 
smacks  now,  and  the  manly  people  that  performed  such  mira 
cles  of  valor  at  Marathon  are  only  a  tribe  of  unconsidered 
slaves  to-day.  The  classic  Illyssus  has  gone  dry,  and  so  have 
all  the  sources  of  Grecian  wealth  and  greatness.  The  nation 
numbers  only  eight  hundred  thousand  souls,  and  there 
is  poverty  and  misery  and  mendacity  enough  among  them  to 
furnish  forty  millions  and  be  liberal  about  it.  Under  King 
Otho  the  revenues  of  the  State  were  five  millions  of  dollars — 
raised  from  a  tax  of  one-tenth  of  all  the  agricultural  products 


MODERN     GREECE. 


355 


li  __-,£!:? 


of  the  land  (which  tenth  the  farmer  had  to  bring  to  the  royal 
granaries  on  pack-mules  any  distance  not  exceeding  six  leagues) 

and  from  extravagant 
taxes  on  trade  and 
commerce.  Out  of 
that  five  millions  the 
small  tyrant  tried  to 
keep  an  army  of  ten 
thousand  men,  pay  all 
the  hundreds  of  useless 

i 

Grand  Equerries  in 
Waiting,  First  Grooms 
of  the  Bedchamber, 
Lord  High  Chancel 
lors  of  the  Exploded 
Exchequer,  and  all 
the  other  absurdities 
which  these  puppy- 

QUEEX   OF   GREECE.  kingdoms     illdulgC     111, 

in    imitation    of    the 

great  monarchies ;  and  in  addition  he  set  about  building  a 
white  marble  palace  to  cost  about  live  millions  itself.  The 
result  was,  simply :  ten  into  five  goes  no  times  and  none  over. 
All  these  things  could  not  be  done  with  five  millions,  and  Otho 
fell  into  trouble. 

The  Greek  throne,  with  its  unpromising  adjuncts  of  a  rag 
ged  population  of  ingenious  rascals  who  were  out  of  employ 
ment  eight  months  in  the  year  because  there  was  little  for 
them  to  borrow  and  less  to  confiscate,  and  a  waste  of  barren 
hills  and  weed-grown  deserts,  went  begging  for  a  good  while. 
It  was  offered  to  one  of  Victoria's  sons,  and  afterwards  to  va 
rious  other  younger  sons  of  royalty  who  had  no  thrones  and 
were  out  of  business,  but  they  all  had  the  charity  to  decline 
the  dreary  honor,  and  veneration  enough  for  Greece's  ancient 
greatness  to  refuse  to  mock  her  sorrowful  rags  and  dirt  with  a 
tinsel  throne  in  this  day  of  her  humiliation — till  they  came  to 
this  young  Danish  George,  and  he  took  it.  He  has  finished 


356 


IN     THE     DARDANELLES. 


the  splendid  palace  I  saw  in  the  radiant  moonlight  the  other 
night,  and  is  doing  many  other  things  for  the  salvation  of 
Greece,  they  say. 


PALACE   OF    GllEECE. 


"We  sailed  through  the  barren  Archipelago,  and  into  the  nar 
row  channel  they  sometimes  call  the  Dardanelles  and  sometimes 
the  Hellespont.  This  part  of  the  country  is  rich  in  historic  re 
miniscences,  and  poor  as  Sahara  in  every  thing  else.  For  in 
stance,  as  we  approached  the  Dardanelles,  we  coasted  along  the 
Plains  of  Troy  and  past  the  mouth  of  the  Scamander ;  we  saw 
where  Troy  had  stood  (in  the  distance,)  and  where  it  does  not 
stand  now — a  city  that  perished  when  the  world  was  young.  The 
poor  Trojans  are  all  dead,  now.  They  were  born  too  late  to 
see  Noah's  ark,  and  died  too  soon  to  see  our  menagarie.  We 
saw  where  Agamemnon's  fleets  rendezvoused,  and  away  inland 
a  mountain  which  the  map  said  was  Mount  Ida.  Within  the 


ANCHORED     BEFORE     CONSTANTINOPLE.          357 

Hellespont  we  saw  where  the  original  first  shoddy  contract 
mentioned  in  history  was  carried  out,  and  the  "  parties  of  the 
second  part "  gently  rebuked  by  Xerxes.  I  speak  of  the  fa 
mous  bridge  of  boats  which  Xerxes  ordered  to  be  built  over 
the  narrowest  part  of  the  Hellespont  (where  it  is  only  two  or 
three  miles  wide.)  A  moderate  gale  destroyed  the  flimsy 
structure,  and  the  King,  thinking  that  to  publicly  rebuke  the 
contractors  might  have  a  good  effect  on  the  next  set,  called 
them  out  before  the  army  and  had  them  beheaded.  In  the 
next  ten  minutes  he  let  a  new  contract  for  the  bridge.  It  has 
been  observed  by  ancient  writers  that  the  second  bridge  was  a 
very  good  bridge.  Xerxes  crossed  his  host  of  five  millions  of 
men  on  it,  and  if  it  had  not  been  purposely  destroyed,  it  would 
probably  have  been  there  yet.  If  our  Government  would  re 
buke  some  of  our  shoddy  contractors  occasionally,  it  might 
work  much  good.  In  the  Hellespont  we  saw  where  Leander 
and  Lord  Byron  swam  across,  the  one  to  see  her  upon  whom 
his  soul's  affections  were  fixed  with  a  devotion  that  only  death 
could  impair,  and  the  other  merely  for  a  flyer,  as  Jack  says. 
We  had  two  noted  tombs  near  us,  too.  On  one  shore  slept 
Ajax,  and  on  the  other  Hecuba. 

We  had  water  batteries  and  forts  on  both  sides  of  the  Hel 
lespont,  flying  the  crimson  flag  of  Turkey,  with  its  white  cres 
cent,  and  occasionally  a  village,  and  sometimes  a  train  of  cam 
els  ;  we  had  all  these  to  look  at  till  we  entered  the  broad  sea  of 
Marmora,  and  then  the  land  soon  fading  from  view,  we  resumed 
euchre  and  whist  once  more. 

We  dropped  anchor  in  the  mouth  of  the  Golden  Horn  at 
daylight  in  the  morning.  Only  three  or  four  of  us  were  up  to 
see  the  great  Ottoman  capital.  The  passengers  do  not  turn 
out  at  unseasonable  hours,  as  they  used  to,  to  get  the  earliest 
possible  glimpse  of  strange  foreign  cities.  They  are  well  over 
that.  If  we  were  lying  in  sight  of  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt, 
they  would  not  come  on  deck  until  after  breakfast,  now-a-days. 

The  Golden  Horn  is  a  narrow  arm  of  the  sea,  which  branches 
from  the  Bosporus  (a  sort  of  broad  river  which  connects  the 
Marmora  and  Black  Seas,)  and,  curving  around,  divides  the 


358          ANCHORED     BEFORE      CONSTANTINOPLE. 

city  in  the  middle.  Galata  and  Pera  are  on  one  side  of  the 
Bosporus,  and  the  Golden  Horn ;  Stambonl  (ancient  Byzan 
tium)  is  upon  the  other.  On  the  other  bank  of  the  Bosporus 
is  Scutari  and  other  suburbs  of  Constantinople.  This  great 
city  contains  a  million  inhabitants,  but  so  narrow  are  its  streets, 
and  so  crowded  together  are  its  houses,  that  it  does  not  cover 
much  more  than  half  as  much  ground  as  New  York  City. 
Seen  from  the  anchorage  or  from  a  mile  or  so  up  the  Bospo 
rus,  it  is  by  far  the  handsomest  city  we  have  seen.  Its  dense 
array  of  houses  swells  upward  from  the  water's  edge,  and 
spreads  over  the  domes  of  many  hills ;  and  the  gardens  that 
peep  out  here  and  there,  the  great  globes  of  the  mosques,  and 
the  countless  minarets  that  meet  the  eye  every  where,  invest 
the  metropolis  with  the  quaint  Oriental  aspect  one  dreams  of 
when  he  reads  books  of  eastern  travel.  Constantinople  makes 
a  noble  picture. 

But  its  attractiveness  begins  and  ends  with  its  picturesque- 
ness.  From  the  time  one  starts  ashore  till  he  gets  back  again, 
he  execrates  it.  The  boat  he  goes  in  is  admirably  miscalcula 
ted  for  the  service  it  is  built  for.  It  is  handsomely  and  neatly 
fitted  up,  but  no  man  could  handle  it  well  in  the  turbulent 
currents  that  sweep  clown  the  Bosporus  from  the  Black  Sea, 
and  few  men  could  row  it  satisfactorily  even  in  still  water.  It 
is  a  long,  light  canoe  (caique,)  large  at  one  end  and  tapering 
to  a  knife  blade  at  the  other.  They  make  that  long  sharp  end 
the  bow,  and  you  can  imagine  how  these  boiling  currents  spin 
it  about.  It  has  two  oars,  and  sometimes  four,  and  no  rudder. 
You  start  to  go  to  a  given  point  and  you  run  in  fifty  different 
directions  before  you  get  there.  First  one  oar  is  backing  wa 
ter,  and  then  the  other ;  it  is  seldom  that  both  are  going  ahead 
at  once.  This  kind  of  boating  is  calculated  to  drive  an  impa- 
'tient  man  mad  in  a  week.  The  boatmen  are  the  awkwardest, 
the  stupidest,  and  the  most  unscientific  on  earth,  without 
question. 

Ashore,  it  was — well,  it  was  an  eternal  circus.  People  were 
thicker  than  bees,  in  those  narrow  streets,  and  the  men  wrere 
dressed  in  all  the  outrageous,  outlandish,  idolatrous,  extrava- 


ANCHORED     BEFORE     CONSTANTINOPLE.          359 

gant,  thunder-and-lightning  costumes  that  ever  a  tailor  with 
the  delirium  tremens  and  seven  devils  could  conceive  of. 
There  was  no  freak  in  dress  too  crazy  to  be  indulged  in ;  no 
absurdity  too  absurd  to  be  tolerated ;  no  frenzy  in  ragged  dia 
bolism  too  fantastic  to  be  attempted.  'No  two  men  were 
dressed  alike.  It  was  a  wild  masquerade  of  all  imaginable 
costumes — every  struggling  throng  in  every  street  was  a  dis 
solving  view  of  stunning  contrasts.  Some  patriarchs  wore 
awful  turbans,  but  the  grand  mass  of  the  infidel  horde  wore 
the  fiery  red  skull-cap  they  call  a  fez.  All  the  remainder  of 
the  raiment  they  indulged  in  was  utterly  indescribable. 

The  shops  here  are  mere  coops,  mere  boxes,  bath-rooms, 
closets — any  thing  you  please  to  call  them — on  the  first  floor. 
The  Turks  sit  cross-legged  in  them,  and  work  and  trade  and 
smoke  long  pipes,  and  smell  like — like  Turks.  That  covers 
the  ground.  Crowding  the  narrow  streets  in  front  of  them 
are  beggars,  who  beg  forever,  yet  never  collect  any  thing ;  and 
wonderful  cripples,  distorted  out  of  all  semblance  of  humanity, 
almost ;  vagabonds  driving  laden  asses ;  porters  carrying  dry- 
goods  boxes  as  large  as  cottages  on  their  backs ;  peddlers  of 
grapes,  hot  corn,  pumpkin  seeds,  and  a  hundred  other  things, 
yelling  like  fiends  ;  and  sleeping  happily,  comfortably,  serenely, 
among  the  hurrying  feet,  are  the  famed  dogs  of  Constantinople ; 
drifting  noiselessly  about  are  squads  of  Turkish  women,  draped 
from  chin  to  feet  in  flowing  robes,  and  with  snowy  veils  bound 
about  their  heads,  that  disclose  only  the  eyes  and  a  vague, 
shadowy  notion  of  their  features.  Seen  moving  about,  far 
away  in  the  dim,  arched  aisles  of  the  Great  Bazaar,  they  look 
as  the  shrouded  dead  must  have  looked  when  they  walked  forth 
from  their  graves  amid  the  storms  and  thunders  and  earth 
quakes  that  burst  upon  Calvary  that  awful  night  of  the  Cruci 
fixion.  A  street  in  Constantinople  is  a  picture  which  one 
ought  to  see  once — not  oftener. 

And  then  there  was  the  goose-rancher — a  fellow  who  drove 
a  hundred  geese  before  him  about  the  city,  and  tried  to  sell 
them.  He  had  a  pole  ten  feet  long,  with  a  crook  in  the  end  of 
it,  and  occasionally  a  goose  would  branch  out  from  the  flock 


860 


AN  INGENIOUS  GOOSE  RANCHER. 


and  make  a  lively  break  around  the  corner,  with  wings  half 
lifted  and  neck  stretched  to  its  utmost.  Did  the  goose-mer 
chant  get  excited  \  "No.  He  took  his  pole  and  reached  after 
that  goose  with  unspeakable  sangfroid — took  a  hitch  round  his 
neck,  and  "  yanked  "  him  back  to  his  place  in  the  flock  with 
out  an  effort.  He  steered  his  geese  with  that  stick  as  easily  as 


GOOSE-RANCHER. 


another  man  would  steer  a  yawl.  A  few  hours  afterward  we 
saw  him  sitting  on  a  stone  at  a  corner,  in  the  midst  of  the  tur 
moil,  sound  asleep  in  the  sun,  with  his  geese  squatting  around 
him,  or  dodging  out  of  the  way  of  asses  and  men.  We  came 


MARVELOUS     CRIPPLES.  361 

by  again,  within  the  hour,  and  he  was  taking  account  of  stock, 
to  see  whether  any  of  his  flock  had  strayed  or  been  stolen. 
The  way  he  did  it  was  unique.  He  put  the  end  of  his  stick 
within  six  or  eight  inches  of  a  stone  wall,  and  made  the  geese 
march  in  single  file  between  it  and  the  wall.  He  counted 
them  as  they  went  by.  There  was  no  dodging  that  arrange 
ment. 

If  you  want  dwarfs — I  mean  just  a  few  dwarfs  for  a  curi 
osity — go  to  Genoa.  If  you  wish  to  buy  them  by  the  gross, 
for  retail,  go  to  Milan.  There  are  plenty  of  dwarfs  all  over 
Italy,  but  it  did  seem  to  me  that  in  Milan  the  crop  was  luxu 
riant.  If  you  would  see  a  fair  average  style  of  assorted  crip 
ples,  go  to  Naples,  or  travel  through  the  Roman  States.  But 
if  you  would  see  the  very  heart  and  home  of  cripples  and 
human  monsters,  both,  go  straight  to  Constantinople.  A  beg 
gar  in  Naples  who  can  show  a  foot  which  has  all  run  into  one 
horrible  toe,  with  one  shapeless  nail  on  it,  has  a  fortune — but 
such  an  exhibition  as  that  would  not  provoke  any  notice  in 
Constantinople.  The  man  would  starve.  Who  would  pay 
any  attention  to  attractions  like  his  among  the  rare  monsters 
that  throng  the  bridges  of  the  Golden  Horn  and  display  their 
deformities  in  the  gutters  of  Stamboul  ?  O,  wretched  impos 
tor  !  How  could  he  stand  against  the  three-legged  woman, 
and  the  man  with  his  eye  in  his  cheek  ?  How  would  he  blush 
in  presence  of  the  man  with  fingers  on  his  elbow  ?  Where 
would  he  hide  himself  when  the  dwarf  with  seven  fingers  on 
each  hand,  no  upper  lip,  and  his  under-jaw  gone,  came  down 
.in  his  majesty?  Bismillah !  The  cripples  of  Europe  are  a 
delusion  and  a  fraud.  The  truly  gifted  flourish  only  in  the 
by-ways  of  Pera  and  Stamboul. 

That  three-legged  woman  lay  on  the  bridge,  with  her  stock 
in  trade  so  disposed  as  to  command  the  most  striking  effect — 
one  natural  leg,  and  two  long,  slender,  twisted  ones  with  feet 
on  them  like  somebody  else's  fore-arm.  Then  there  was  a 
man  further  along  who  had  no  eyes,  and  whose  face  was  the 
color  of  a  fly-blown  beefsteak,  and  wrinkled  and  twisted  like 
a  lava-flow — and  verily  so  tumbled  and  distorted  were  his  fea- 


362  THE     GREAT     MOSQUE. 

tures  that  no  man  could  tell  the  wart  that  served  him  for  a 
nose  from  his  cheek-bones.  In  Stamboul  was  a  man  with  a 
prodigious  head,  an  uncommonly  long  body,  legs  eight  inches 
long  and  feet  like  snow-shoes.  He  traveled  on  those  feet  and 
his  hand?,  and  was  as  sway-backed  as  if  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes 
had  been  riding  him.  Ah,  a  beggar  has  to  have  exceedingly 
good  points  to  make  a  living  in  Constantinople.  A  blue-faced 
man,  who  had  nothing  to  offer  except  that  he  had  been  blown 
up  in  a  mine,  would  be  regarded  as  a  rank  impostor,  and  a 
mere  damaged  soldier  on  crutches  would  never  make  a  cent. 
It  would  pay  him  to  get  a  piece  of  his  head  taken  off,  and  cul 
tivate  a  wen  like  a  carpet  sack. 

The  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia  is  the  chief  lion  of  Constantino 
ple.  You  must  get  a  firman  and  hurry  there  the  first  thing. 
"We  did  that.  We  did  not  get  a  firman,  but  we  took  along 
four  or  five  francs  apiece,  which  is  much  the  same  thing. 

I  do  not  think  much  of  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia.  I  sup 
pose  I  lack  appreciation.  We  will  let  it  go  at  that.  It  is  the 
rustiest  old  barn  in  heathendom.  I  believe  all  the  interest 
tjiat  attaches  to  it  comes  from  the  fact  that  it  was  built  for  a 
Christian  church  and  then  turned  into  a  mosque,  without  much 
alteration,  by  the  Mohammedan  conquerors  of  the  land.  They 
made  me  take  off  my  boots  and  walk  into  the  place  in  my 
stocking-feet.  I  caught  cold,  and  got  myself  so  stuck  up  with 
a  complication  of  gums,  slime  and  general  corruption,  that  I 
wore  out  more  than  two  thousand  pair  of  boot-jacks  getting 
my  boots  off  that  night,  and  even  then  some  Christian  hide 
peeled  off  with  them.  I  abate  not  a  single  boot-jack. 

St.  Sophia  is  a  colossal  church,  thirteen  or  fourteen  hundred 
years  old,  and  unsightly  enough  to  be  very,  very  much  older. 
Its  immense  dome  is  said  to  be  more  wonderful  than  St.  Pe 
ter's,  but  its  dirt  is  much  more  wonderful  than  its  dome,  though 
they  never  mention  it.  The  church  has  a  hundred  and  sev 
enty  pillars  in  it,  each  a  single  piece,  and  all  of  costly  marbles 
of  various  kinds,  but  they  came  from  ancient  temples  at  Baal- 
bee,  Heliopolis,  Athens  and  Ephesus,  and  are  battered,  ugly 
and  repulsive.  They  were  a  thousand  years  old  when  this 


THE     GREAT     MOSQUE. 


363 


church  was  new,  and  then  the  contrast  must  have  been  ghast 
ly — if  Justinian's  architects  did  not  trim  them  any.  The 
inside  of  the  dome  is  figured  all  over  with  a  monstrous  inscrip 
tion  in  Turkish  characters,  wrought  in  gold  mosaic,  that  looks 
as  glaring  as  a  circus  bill ;  the  pavements  and  the  marble  bal- 


ustrades  are  all  battered  and  dirty ;  the  perspective  is  marred 
every  where  by  a  web  of  ropes  that  depend  from  the  dizzy 
height  of  the  dome,  and  suspend  countless  dingy,  coarse  oil 
lamps,  and  ostrich-eggs,  six  or  seven  feet  above  the  floor. 
Squatting  and  sitting  in  groups,  here  and  there  and  far  and 
near,  were  ragged  Turks  reading  books,  hearing  sermons,  or 
receiving  lessons  like  children,  and  in  fifty  places  were  more 


364  THE     GREAT     MOSQUE. 

of  the  same  sort  bowing  and  straightening  up,  bowing  again 
and  getting  down  to  kiss  the  earth,  muttering  prayers  the 
while,  and  keeping  up  their  gymnastics  till  they  ought  to  have 
been  tired,  if  they  were  not. 

Every  where  was  dirt,  and  dust,  and  dinginess,  and  gloom ; 
every  where  were  signs  of  a  hoary  antiquity,  but  with  nothing 
touching  or  beautiful  about  it ;  every  where  were  those  groups 
of  fantastic  pagans  ;  overhead  the  gaudy  mosaics  and  the  web 
of  lamp-ropes — nowhere  was  there  any  thing  to  win  one's  love 
or  challenge  his  admiration. 

The  people  who  go  into  ecstacies  over  St.  Sophia  must  surely 
get  them  out  of  the  guide-book  (where  every  church  is  spoken 
of  as  being  "  considered  by  good  judges  to  be  the  most  mar 
velous  structure,  in  many  respects,  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen.")  Or  else  they  are  those  old  connoisseurs  from  the  wilds 
of  New  Jersey  who  laboriously  learn  the  difference  between  a 
fresco  and  a  fire-plug  and  from  that  day  forward  feel  privi 
leged  to  void  their  critical  bathos  on  painting,  sculpture  and 
architecture  forever  more. 

"We  visited  the  Dancing  Dervishes.  There  were  twenty-one 
of  them.  They  wore  a  long,  light-colored  loose  robe  that 
hung  to  their  heels.  Each  in  his  turn  went  up  to  the  priest 
(they  were  all  within  a  large  circular  railing)  and  bowed  pro 
foundly  and  then  went  spinning  away  deliriously  and  took  his 
appointed  place  in  the  circle,  and  continued  to  spin.  When 
all  had  spun  themselves  to  their  places,  they  were  about  five  or 
six  feet  apart — and  so  situated,  the  entire  circle  of  spinning 
pagans  spun  itself  three  separate  times  around  the  room.  It 
took  twenty-five  minutes  to  do  it.  They  spun  on  the  left  foot, 
and  kept  themselves  going  by  passing  the  right  rapidly  before 
it  and  digging  it  against  the  waxed  floor.  Some  of  them  made 
incredible  "  time."  Most  of  them  spun  around  forty  times  in 
a  minute,  and  one  artist  averaged  about  sixty-one  times  a  min 
ute,  and  kept  it  up  during  the  whole  twenty-five.  His  robe 
filled  with  air  and  stood  out  all  around  him  like  a  balloon. 

They  made  no  noise  of  any  kind,  and  most  of  them  tilted 
their  heads  back  and  closed  their  eyes,  entranced  with  a  sort  of 


THE    ONE    THOUSAND    AND    ONE    COLUMNS.       365 

devotional  ecstacy.  There  was  a  rude  kind  of  music,  part  of 
the  time,  but  the  musicians  were  not  visible.  None  but  ^pin 
ners  were  allowed  within  the  circle.  A  man  had  to  either 
spin  or  stay  outside.  It  was  about  as  barbarous  an  exhibition 
as  we  have  witnessed  yet.  Then  sick  persons  came  and  lay 
down,  and  beside  them  women  laid  their  sick  children  (one  a 
babe  at  the  breast,)  and  the  patriarch  of  the  Dervishes  walked 
upon  their  bodies.  He  was  supposed  to  cure  their  diseases  by 
trampling  upon  their  breasts  or  backs  or  standing  on  the  back 
of  their  necks.  This  is  well  enough  for  a  people  who  think 
all  their  affairs  are  made  or  marred  by  viewless  spirits  of 
the  air — by  giants,  gnomes,  and  genii — and  who  still  believe, 
to  this  day,  all  the  wild  tales  in  the  Arabian  Nights.  Even  so 
an  intelligent  missionary  tells  me. 

"We  visited  the  Thousand  and  One  Columns.  I  do  not  know 
what  it  was  originally  intended  for,  but  they  said  it  was  built 
for  a  reservoir.  It  is  situated  in  the  centre  of  Constantinople. 
You  go  down  a  flight  of  stone  steps  in  the  middle  of  a  barren 
place,  and  there  you  are.  You  are  forty  feet  under  ground, 
and  in  the  midst  of  a  perfect  wilderness  of  tall,  slender,  gran 
ite  columns,  of  Byzantine  architecture.  Stand  where  you 
would,  or  change  your  position  as  often  as  you  pleased,  you 
were  always  a  centre  from  which  radiated  a  dozen  long  arch 
ways  and  colonnades  that  lost  themselves  in  distance  and  the 
sombre  twilight  of  the  place.  This  old  dried-up  reservoir  is 
occupied  by  a  few  ghostly  silk-spinners  now,  and  one  of  them 
showed  me  a  cross  cut  high  up  in  one  of  the  pillars.  I  sup 
pose  he  meant  me  to  understand  that  the  institution  was  there 
before  the  Turkish  occupation,  and  I  thought  he  made  a  re 
mark  to  that  effect ;  but  he  must  have  had  an  impediment  in 
his  speech,  for  I  did  not  understand  him. 

We  took  off  our  shoes  and  went  into  the  marble  mausoleum 
of  the  Sultan  Mahmoud,  the  neatest  piece  of  architecture,  in 
side,  that  I  have  seen  lately.  Mahmoud's  tomb  was  covered 
with  a  black  velvet  pall,  which  was  elaborately  embroidered 
with  silver ;  it  stood  within  a  fancy  silver  railing ;  at  the  sides 
and  corners  were  silver  candlesticks  that  \vould  weigh  more 


366  THE    SULTAN'S    TOMB. 

than  a  hundred  pounds,  and  they  supported  candles  as  large  as 
a  man's  leg ;  on  the  top  of  the  sarcophagus  was  a  fez,  with  a 
handsome  diamond  ornament  upon  it,  which  an  attendant  said 
cost  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  and  lied  like  a  Turk  when 
he  said  it.  Mahmoud's  whole  family  were  comfortably  planted 
around  him. 


TURKISH    MAUSOLEUM. 

"We  went  to  the  great  Bazaar  in  Stamboul,  of  course,  and  I 
shall  not  describe  it  further  than  to  say  it  is  a  monstrous  hive 
of  little  shops — thousands,  I  should  say — all  under  one  roof, 
and  cut  up  into  innumerable  little  blocks  by  narrow  streets 
which  are  arched  overhead.  One  street  is  devoted  to  a  partic 
ular  kind  of  merchandise,  another  to  another,  and  so  on. 


THE     GREAT     BAZAAR.  367 

When  you  wish  to  buy  a  pair  of  shoes  you  have  the  swing  of 
the  whole  street — you  do  not  have  to  walk  yourself  down 
liuntiiiff  stores  in  different  localities.  It  is  the  same  with  silks, 

o 

antiquities,  shawls,  etc.  The  place  is  crowded  with  people  all 
the  time,  and  as  the  gay-colored  Eastern  fabrics  are  lavishly 
displayed  before  every  shop,  the  great  Bazaar  of  Stamboul  is 
one  of  the  sights  that  are  worth  seeing.  It  is  full  of  life,  and 
stir,  and  business,  dirt,  beggars,  asses,  yelling  peddlers,  porters, 
dervishes,  high-born  Turkish  female  shoppers,  Greeks,  and 
weird-looking  and  weirdly  dressed  Mohammedans  from  the 
mountains  and  the  far  provinces — and  the  only  solitary  thing 
one  does  not  smell  when  he  is  in  the  Great  Bazaar,  is  some 
thing  which  smells  good. 


CHAPTER   XXXIY. 

MOSQUES  are  plenty,  churches  are  plenty,  graveyards  are 
plenty,  but  morals  and  whiskey  are  scarce.  The  Koran 
does  not  permit  Mohammedans  to  drink.  Their  natural  in 
stincts  do  not  permit  them  to  be  moral.  They  say  the  Sultan 
has  eight  hundred  wives.  This  almost  amounts  to  bigamy. 
It  makes  our  cheeks  burn  with  shame  to  see  such  a  thing  per 
mitted  here  in  Turkey.  We  do  not  mind  it  so  much  in  Salt 
Lake,  however. 

Circassian  and  Georgian  girls  are  still  sold  in  Constantino 
ple  by  their  parents,  but  not  publicly.  The  great  slave  marts 
we  have  all  read  so  much  about- — where  tender  young  girls 
were  stripped  for  inspection,  and  criticised  and  discussed  just 
as  if  they  were  horses  at  an  agricultural  fair — no  longer  exist. 
The  exhibition  and  the  sales  are  private  now.  Stocks  are  up, 
just  at  present,  partly  because  of  a  brisk  demand  created  by 
the  recent  return  of  the  Sultan's  suite  from  the  courts  of 
Europe ;  partly  on  account  of  an  unusual  abundance  of  bread- 
stuffs,  which  leaves  holders  nntortured  by  hunger  and  enables 
them  to  hold  back  for  high  prices  ;  and  partly  because  buyers 
are  too  weak  to  bear  the  market,  while  sellers  are  amply  pre 
pared  to  bull  it.  Under  these  circumstances,  if  the  American 
metropolitan  newspapers  were  published  here  in  Constantino 
ple,  their  next  commercial  report  would  read  about  as  follows, 
I  suppose : 

SLAVE    GIRL    MARKET   REPORT. 

"Best  brands  Circassians,  crop  of  1850,  £200;  1852,  £250;  1854,  £300.  Best 
brands  Georgian,  none  in  market;  second  quality,  1851,  £180.  Nineteen  fair  to 


SCARCITY     OF     MORALS     AND     WHISKEY.         369 

middling  Wallacbian  girls  offered  at  £130  @  150,  but  no  takers;  sixteen  prime  A  1 
Bold  in  small  lots  to  close  out — terms  private. 

"Sales  of  one  lot  Circassians,  prime  to  good,  1852  to  1854,  at  £240  @  242|,  buyer 
30;  one  forty-niner — damaged — at  £23,  seller  ten,  no  deposit.  Several  Georgians, 
fancy  brands,  1852,  changed  hands  to  fill  orders.  The  Georgians  now  on  hand  are 
mostly  last  year's  crop,  which  was  unusually  poor.  The  new  crop  is  a  little  back 
ward,  but  will  be  coming  in  shortly.  As  regards  its  quantity  and  quality,  the  ac 
counts  are  most  encouraging.  In  this  connection  we  can  safely  say,  also,  that  the 
new  crop  of  Circassians  is  looking  extremely  well.  His  Majesty  the  Sultan  has 
already  sent  in  large  orders  for  his  new  harem,  which  will  be  finished  within  a  fort 
night,  and  this  has  naturally  strengthened  the  market  and  given  Circassian  stock  a 
strong  upward  tendency.  Taking  advantage  of  the  inflated  market,  many  of  our 
shrewdest  operators  are  selling  short.  There  are  hints  of  a  "corner"  on  Walla- 
chians. 

"  There  is  nothing  new  in  Nubians.     Slow  sale. 

"Eunuchs — None  offering;  however,  large  cargoes  are  expected  from  Egypt  to 
day." 

I  think  the  above  would  be  about  the  style  of  the  commer 
cial  report.  Prices  are  pretty  high  now,  and  holders  firm ; 
but,  two  or  three  years  ago,  parents  in  a  starving  condition 
brought  their  young  daughters  down  here  and  sold  them  for 
even  twenty  and  thirty  dollars,  when  they  could  do  no  better, 
simply  to  save  themselves  and  the  girls  from  dying  of  want. 
It  is  sad  to  think  of  so  distressing  a  thing  as  this,  and  I  for  one 
am  sincerely  glad  the  prices  are  up  again. 

Commercial  morals,  especially,  are  bad.  There  is  no  gain 
saying  that.  Greek,  Turkish  and  Armenian  morals  consist  only 
in  attending  church  regularly  on  the  appointed  Sabbaths,  and 
in  breaking  the  ten  commandments  all  the  balance  of  the  week. 
It  comes  natural  to  them  to  lie  and  cheat  in  the  first  place,  and 
then  they  go  on  and  improve  on  nature  until  they  arrive  at 
perfection.  In  recommending  his  son  to  a  merchant  as  a  val 
uable  salesman,  a  father  does  not  say  he  is  a  nice,  moral,  up 
right  boy,  and  goes  to  Sunday  School  and  is  honest,  but  he 
says,  "  This  boy  is  worth  his  weight  in  broad  pieces  of  a  hun 
dred — for  behold,  he  will  cheat  whomsoever  hath  dealings 
with  him,  and  from  the  Euxine  to  the  waters  of  Marmora  there 
abideth  not  so  gifted  a  liar !"  How  is  that  for  a  recommenda 
tion  ?  The  Missionaries  tell  me  that  they  hear  encomiums  like 
that  passed  upon  people  every  day.  They  say  of  a  person  they 

24 


370  THE     SLANDERED     DOGS. 

admire,  "  Ah,  he  is  a  charming  swindler,  and  a  most  exquisite 
liar!" 

Every  body  lies  and  cheats — every  body  who  is  in  business, 
at  any  rate.  Even  foreigners  soon  have  to  come  down  to  the 
custom  of  the  country,  and  they  do  not  buy  and  sell  long  in 
Constantinople  till  they  lie  and  cheat  like  a  Greek.  I  say 
like  a  Greek,  because  the  Greeks  are  called  the  worst  trans 
gressors  in  this  line.  Several  Americans  long  resident  in  Con 
stantinople  contend  that  most  Turks  are  pretty  trustworthy, 
but  few  claim  that  the  Greeks  have  any  virtues  that  a  man  can 
discover — at  least  without  a  fire  assay. 

I  am  half  willing  to  believe  that  the  celebrated  dogs  of  Con 
stantinople  have  been  misrepresented — slandered.  I  have 
always  been  led  to  suppose  that  they  were  so  thick  in  the 
streets  that  they  blocked  the  way;  that  they  moved  about  in 
organized  companies,  platoons  and  regiments,  and  took  what 
they  wanted  by  determined  and  ferocious  assault ;  and  that  at 
night  they  drowned  all  other  sounds  with  their  terrible  howl- 
ings.  The  dogs  I  see  here  can  not  be  those  I  have  read  of. 

I  find  them  every  where,  but  not  in  strong  force.  The  most 
I  have  found  together  has  been  about  ten  or  twenty.  And 
night  or  day  a  fair  proportion  of  them  were  sound  asleep. 
Those  that  were  not  asleep  always  looked  as  if  they  wanted 
to  be.  I  never  saw  such  utterly  wretched,  starving,  sad- vis- 
aged,  broken-hearted  looking  curs  in  my  life.  It  seemed  a 
grim  satire  to  accuse  such  brutes  as  these  of  taking  things  by 
force  of  arms.  They  hardly  seemed  to  have  strength  enough 
or  ambition  enough  to  walk  across  the  street — I  do  not  know 
that  I  have  seen  one  walk  that  far  yet.  They  are  mangy  and 
bruised  and  mutilated,  and  often  you  see  one  with  the  hair 
singed  off  him  in  such  wide  and  well  defined  tracts  that  he 
looks  like  a  map  of  the  new  Territories.  They  are  the  sorriest 
beasts  that  breathe — the  most  abject — the  most  pitiful.  In 
their  faces  is  a  settled  expression  of  melancholy,  an  air  of  hope 
less  despondency.  The  hairless  patches  on  a  scalded  dog  are 
preferred  by  the  fleas  of  Constantinople  to  a  wider  range  on  a 
healthier  dog ;  and  the  exposed  places  suit  the  fleas  exactly.  I 


SOCIAL     STATUS     OF     THE     DOGS 


371 


saw  a  dog  of  tins  kind  start  to  nibble  at  a  flea — a  fly  attracted 
his  attention,  and  lie  made  a  snatch  at  him  ;  the  flea  called  for 
him  once  more,  and  that  forever  unsettled  him ;  he  looked 
sadly  at  his  flea-pasture,  then  sadly  looked  at  his  bald  spot. 
Then  he  heaved  a  sigh  and  dropped  his  head  resignedly  upon 
his  paws.  He  was  not  equal  to  the  situation. 


SLANDERED  DOGS. 


The  dogs  sleep  in  the  streets,  all  over  the  city.  From  one 
end  of  the  street  to  the  other,  I  suppose  they  will  average 
about  eight  or  ten  to  a  block.  Sometimes,  of  course,  there  are 
fifteen  or  twenty  to  a  block.  They  do  not  belong  to  any  body, 
and  they  seem  to  have  no  close  personal  friendships  among  each 
other.  But  they  district  the  city  themselves,  and  the  dogs  of 
each  district,  whether  it  be  half  a  block  in  extent,  or  ten 
blocks,  have  to  remain  within  its  bounds.  Woe  to  a  dog  if  he 
crosses  the  line !  His  neighbors  would  snatch  the  balance  of 
his  hair  off  in  a  second.  So  it  is  said.  But  they  don't  look  it. 

They  sleep  in  the  streets  these  days.  They  are  my  com 
pass — my  guide.  "When  I  see  the  dogs  sleep  placidly  on, 
while  men,  sheep,  geese,  and  all  moving  things  turn  out  and 
go  around  them,  I  know  I  am  not  in  the  great  street  where  the 
hotel  is,  and  must  go  further.  In  the  Grand  Rue  the  dogs 
have  a  sort  of  air  of  being  on  the  lookout — an  air  born  of  be- 


372  SOCIAL     STATUS     OF     THE     DOGS. 

ing  obliged  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  many  carriages  every 
day — and  that  expression  one  Recognizes  in  a  moment.  It 
does  not  exist  upon  the  face  of  any  dog  without  the  confines 
of  that  street.  All  others  sleep  placidly  and  keep  no  watch. 
They  would  not  move,  though  the  Sultan  himself  passed  by. 

In  one  narrow  street  (but  none  of  them  are  w^ide)  I  saw  three 
dogs  lying  coiled  up,  about  a  foot  or  two  apart.  End  to  end 
they  lay,  and  so  they  just  bridged  the  street  neatly,  from  gut 
ter  to  gutter.  A  drove  of  a  hundred  sheep  came  along.  They 
stepped  right  over  the  dogs,  the  rear  crowding  the  front,  impa 
tient  to  get  on.  The  dogs  looked  lazily  up,  flinched  a  little 
when  the  impatient  feet  of  the  sheep  touched  their  raw  backs- 
sighed,  and  lay  peacefully  down  again.  No  talk  could  be 
plainer  than  that.  So  some  of  the  sheep  jumped  over  them 
and  others  scrambled  between,  occasionally  chipping  a  leg  with 
their  sharp  hoofs,  and  when  the  whole  flock  had  made  the 
trip,  the  dogs  sneezed  a  little,  in  the  cloud  of  dust,  but  never 
budged  their  bodies  an  inch.  I  thought  I  was  lazy,  but  I  am 
a  steam-engine  compared  to  a  Constantinople  dog.  But  was 
not  that  a  singular  scene  for  a  city  of  a  million  inhabitants  ? 

These  dogs  are  the  scavengers  of  the  city.  That  is  their 
official  position,  and  a  hard  one  it  is.  However,  it  is  their 
protection.  But  for  their  usefulness  in  partially  cleansing 
these  terrible  streets,  they  would  not  be  tolerated  long.  They 
eat  any  thing  and  every  thing  that  comes  in  their  way,  from 
melon  rinds  and  spoiled  grapes  up  through  all  the  grades  and 
species  of  dirt  and  refuse  to  their  own  dead  friends  and  rela 
tives — and  yet  they  are  always  lean,  always  hungry,  always 
despondent.  The  people  are  loath  to  kill  them — do  not  kill 
them,  in  fact.  The  Turks  have  an  innate  antipathy  to  taking 
the  life  of  any  dumb  animal,  it  is  said.  But  they  do  worse. 
They  hang  and  kick  and  stone  and  scald  these  wretched  crea 
tures  to  the  very  verge  of  death,  and  then  leave  them  to  live 
and  suffer. 

Once  a  Sultan  proposed  to  kill  off  all  the  dogs  here,  and 
did  begin  the  work — but  the  populace  raised  such  a  howl  of 
horror  about  it  that  the  massacre  was  stayed.  After  a  while, 


PERILS     OF     JOURNALISM     IN     TURKEY.          373 

he  proposed  to  remove  them  all  to  an  island  in  the  Sea  of  Mar 
mora.  No  objection  was  offered,  and  a  ship-load  or  so  was 
taken  away.  But  when  it  came  to  be  known  that  somehow  or 
other  the  dogs  never  got  to  the  island,  but  always  fell  over 
board  in  the  night  and  perished,  another  howl  was  raised  and 
the  transportation  scheme  was  dropped. 

So  the  dogs  remain  in  peaceable  possession  of  the  streets. 
I  do  not  say  that  they  do  not  howl  at  night,  nor  that  they  do 
not  attack  people  who  have  not  a  red  fez  on  their  heads.  I 
only  say  that  it  would  be  mean  for  me  to  accuse  them  of  these 
unseemly  things  who  have  not  seen  them  do  them  with  my 
own  eyes  or  heard  them  with  my  own  ears. 

I  was  a  little  surprised  to  see  Turks  and  Greeks  playing 
newsboy  right  here  in  the  mysterious  land  where  the  giants 
and  genii  of  the  Arabian  Nights  once  dwelt — where  winged 
horses  and  hydra-headed  dragons  guarded  enchanted  castles — 
where  Princes  and  Princesses  flew  through  the  air  on  carpets 
that  obeyed  a  mystic  talisman — where  cities  whose  houses  were 
made  of  precious  stones  sprang  up  in  a  night  under  the  hand 
of  the  magician,  and  where  busy  marts  were  suddenly  stricken 
with  a  spell  and  each  citizen  Jay  or  sat,  or  stood  with  weapon 
raised  or  foot  advanced,  just  as  he  was,  speechless  and  motion 
less,  till  time  had  told  a  hundred  years ! 

It  was  curious  to  see  newsboys  selling  papers  in  so  dreamy  a 
land  as  that.  And,  to  say  truly,  it  is  comparatively  a  new 
thing  here.  The  selling  of  newspapers  had  its  birth  in  Con 
stantinople  about  a  year  ago,  and  was  a  child  of  the  Prussian 
and  Austrian  war. 

There  is  one  paper  published  here  in  the  English  lan 
guage — The  Levant  Herald — and  there  are  generally  a  number 
of  Greek  and  a  few  French  papers  rising  and  falling,  strug 
gling  up  and  falling  again.  Newspapers  are  not  popular  with 
the  Sultan's  Government.  They  do  not  understand  jour 
nalism.  The  proverb  says,  "  The  unknown  is  always  great." 
To  the  court,  the  newspaper  is  a  mysterious  and  rascally  insti 
tution.  They  know  what  a  pestilence  is,  because  they  have 
one  occasionally  that  thins  the  people  out  at  the  rate  of  two 


374 


INGENIOUS     ITALIAN     JOURNALISM. 


thousand  a  day,  and  they  regard  a  newspaper  as  a  mild  form 
of  pestilence.  When  it  goes  astray,  they  suppress  it — pounce 
upon  it  without  warning,  and  throttle  it.  When  it  don't  go 
astray  for  a  long  time,  they  get  suspicious  and  throttle  it  anyhow, 
because  they  think  it  is  hatching  deviltry.  Imagine  the  Grand 
Yizier  in  solemn  council  with  the  magnates  of  the  realm, 
spelling  his  way  through  the  hated  newspaper,  and  finally 
delivering  his  profound  decision :  "  This  thing  means  mis 
chief — it  is  too  darkly,  too  suspiciously  inoffensive — suppress 
it !  Warn  the  publisher  that  we  can  not  have  this  sort  of 
thing :  put  the  editor  in  prison  !" 


THE   CENSOR   OX    DUTY. 


The  newspaper  business  has  its  inconveniences  in  Constanti 
nople.  Two  Greek  papers  and  one  French  one  were  sup 
pressed  here  within  a  few  days  of  each  other.  No  victories  of 
the  Cretans  are  allowed  to  be  printed.  From  time  to  time  the 
Grand  Vizier  sends  a  notice  to  the  various  editors  that  the 
Cretan  insurrection  is  entirely  suppressed,  and  although  that 


INGENIOUS     ITALIAN     JOUKNALISM.  375 

editor  knows  better,  lie  still  has  to  print  the  notice.  The  Le 
vant  Herald  is  too  fond  of  speaking  praisefully  of  Americans 
to  be  popular  with  the  Sultan,  who  does  not  relish  our  sympa 
thy  with  the  Cretans,  and  therefore  that  paper  has  to  be  par 
ticularly  circumspect  in  order  to  keep  out  of  trouble.  Once 
the  editor,  forgetting  the  official  notice  in  his  paper  that  the 
Cretans  were  crushed  out,  printed  a  letter  of  a  very  different 
tenor,  from  the  American  Consul  in  Crete,  and  was  fined  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  for  it.  Shortly  he  printed  another 
from  the  same  source  and  was  imprisoned  three  months  for  his 
pains.  I  think  I  could  get  the  assistant  editorship-  of  the  Le 
vant  Herald,  but  I  am  going  to  try  to  worry  along  without  it. 

To  suppress  a  paper  here  involves  the  ruin  of  the  publisher, 
almost.  But  in  Naples  I  think  they  speculate  on  misfortunes 
of  that  kind.  Papers  are  suppressed  there  every  day,  and 
spring  up  the  next  day  under  a  new  name.  During  the  ten 
days  or  a  fortnight  we  staid  there  one  paper  was  murdered  and 
resurrected  twice.  The  newsboys  are  smart  there,  just  as  they 
are  elsewhere.  They  take  advantage  of  popular  weaknesses. 
When  they  find  they  are  not  likely  to  sell  out,  they  approach 
a  citizen  mysteriously,  and  say  in  a  low  voice — "  Last  copy, 
sir :  double  price ;  paper  just  been  suppressed  !"  The  man 
buys  it,  of  course,  and  finds  nothing  in  it.  They  do  say — I  do 
not  vouch  for  it — but  they  do  say  that  men  sometimes  print  a 
vast  edition  of  a  paper,  with  a  ferociously  seditious  article  in 
it,  distribute  it  quickly  among  the  newsboys,  and  clear  out  till 
the  Government's  indignation  cools.  It  pays  well.  Confisca 
tion  don't  amount  to  any  thing.  The  type  and  presses  are  not 
worth  taking  care  of. 

There  is  only  one  English  newspaper  in  Naples.  It  has 
seventy  subscribers.  The  publisher  is  getting  rich  very  delib 
erately — very  deliberately  indeed. 

I  never  shall  want  another  Turkish  lunch.  The  cooking  ap 
paratus  was  in  the  little  lunch  room,  near  the  bazaar,  and  it 
was  all  open  to  the  street.  The  cook  was  slovenly,  and  so  was 
the  table,  and  it  had  no  cloth  on  it.  The  fellow  took  a  mass 
of  sausage-meat  and  coated  it  round  a  wire  and  laid  it  on  a 


376  THE     NARGHILI     FRAUD. 

charcoal  fire  to  cook.  When  it  was  done,  he  laid  it  aside 
and  a  dog  walked  sadly  in  and  nipped  it.  He  smelt  it  first, 
and  probably  recognized  the  remains  of  a  friend.  The  cook 
took  it  away  from  him  and  laid  it  before  us.  Jack  said,  "  I 
pass  " — he  plays  euchre  sometimes — and  we  all  passed  in  turn. 
Then  the  cook  baked  a  broad,  flat,  wheaten  cake,  greased  it 
well  with  the  sausage,  and  started  towards  us  with  it.  It 
dropped  in  the  dirt,  and  he  picked  it  up  and  polished  it  on  his 
breeches,  and  laid  it  before  us.  Jack  said,  "  I  pass."  We  all 
passed.  He  put  some  eggs  in  a  frying  pan,  and  stood  pensively 
prying  slabs  of  meat  from  between  his  teeth  with  a  fork. 
Then  he  used  the  fork  to  turn  the  eggs  with — and  brought 
them  along.  Jack  said  "  Pass  again."  All  followed  suit. 
We  did  not  know  what  to  do,  and  so  we  ordered  a  new  ra 
tion  of  sausage.  The  cook  got  out  his  wire,  apportioned  a 
proper  amount  of  sausage-meat,  spat  it  on  his  hands  and  fell 
to  work  !  This  time,  with  one  accord,  we  all  passed  out.  We 
paid  and  left.  That  is  all  I  learned  about  Turkish  lunches.  A 
Turkish  lunch  is  good,  no  doubt,  but  it  has  its  little  draw 
backs. 

When  I  think  how  I  have  been  swindled  by  books  of  Oriental 
travel,  I  want  a  tourist  for  breakfast.  For  years  and  years  I 
have  dreamed  of  the  wonders  of  the  Turkish  bath ;  for  years 
and  years  I  have  promised  myself  that  I  would  yet  enjoy  one. 
Many  and  many  a  time,  in  fancy,  I  have  lain  in  the  marble 
bath,  and  breathed  the  slumbrous  fragrance  of  Eastern  spices 
that  filled  the  air ;  then  passed  through  a  weird  and  complica 
ted  system  of  pulling  and  hauling,  and  drenching  and  scrub 
bing,  by  a  gang  of  naked  savages  who  loomed  vast  and  vaguely 
through  the  steaming  mists,  like  demons ;  then  rested  for  a 
while  on  a  divan  fit  for  a  king ;  then  passed  through  another 
complex  ordeal,  and  one  more  fearful  than  the  first ;  and, 
finally,  swathed  in  soft  fabrics,  been  conveyed  to  a  princely  sa 
loon  and  laid  on  a  bed  of  eider  down,  where  eunuchs,  gorgeous 
of  costume,  fanned  me  while  I  drowsed  and  dreamed,  or  con 
tentedly  gazed  at  the  rich  hangings  of  the  apartment,  the  soft 
carpets,  the  sumptuous  furniture,  the  pictures,  and  drank  deli- 


THE    TURKISH     BATH.  377 

cious  coffee,  smoked  the  soothing  narghili,  and  dropped,  at  the 
last,  into  tranquil  repose,  lulled  by  sensuous  odors  from  un 
seen  censers,  by  the  gentle  influence  of  the  narghili's  Persian 
tobacco,  and  by  the  music  of  fountains  that  counterfeited  the 
pattering  of  summer  rain. 

That  was  the  picture,  just  as  I  got  it  from  incendiary  books 
of  travel.  It  was  a  poor,  miserable  imposture.  The  reality 
is  no  more  like  it  than  the  Five  Points  are  like  the  Garden  of 
Eden.  They  received  me  in  a  great  court,  paved  with  marble 
slabs ;  around  it  were  broad  galleries,  one  above  another,  car 
peted  with  seedy  matting,  railed  with  unpainted  balustrades, 
and  furnished  with  huge  rickety  chairs,  cushioned  with  rusty 
old  mattresses,  indented  with  impressions  left  by  the  forms  of 
nine  successive  generations  of  men  who  had  reposed  upon  them. 
The  place  was  vast,  naked,  dreary ;  its  court  a  barn,  its  galle 
ries  stalls  for  human  horses.  The  cadaverous,  half  nude  var- 
lets  that  served  in  the  establishment  had  nothing  of  poetry  in 
their  appearance,  nothing  of  romance,  nothing  of  Oriental 
splendor.  They  shed  no  entrancing  odors — just  the  contrary. 
Their  hungry  eyes  and  their  lank  forms  continually  suggested 
one  glaring,  unsentimental  fact — they  wanted  what  they  term 
in  California  "  a  square  meal." 

I  went  into  one  of  the  racks  and  undressed.  An  unclean 
starveling  wrapped  a  gaudy  table-cloth  about  his  loins,  and 
hung  a  white  rag  over  my  shoulders.  If  I  had  had  a  tub  then, 
it  would  have  come  natural  to  me  to  take  in  washing.  I  was 
then  conducted  down  stairs  into  the  wet,  slippery  court,  and 
the  first  things  that  attracted  my  attention  were  my  heels.  My 
foil  excited  no  comment.  They  expected  it,  no  doubt.  It 
belonged  in  the  list  of  softening,  sensuous  influences  peculiar 
to  this  home  of  Eastern  luxury.  It  was  softening  enough,  cer 
tainly,  but  its  application  was  not  happy.  They  now  gave  me 
a  pair  of  wooden  clogs — benches  in  miniature,  with  leather 
straps  over  them  to  confine  my  feet  (which  they  would  have 
done,  only  I  do  not  wear  No.  13s.)  These  things  dangled  un 
comfortably  by  the  straps  when  I  lifted  up  my  feet,  and  came 
down  in  awkward  and  unexpected  places  when  I  put  them  on 


378 


THE     TURKISH     BATH. 


the  floor  again,  and  sometimes  turned  sideways  and  wrenched 
my  ankles  out  of  joint.  However,  it  was  all  Oriental  luxury, 
and  I  did  what  I  could  to  enjoy  it. 


TURKISH   BATH. 


They  put  me  in  another  part  of  the  barn  and  laid  me  on  a 
stuffy  sort  of  pallet,  which  was  not  made  of  cloth  of  gold,  or 
Persian  shawls,  but  was  merely  the  unpretending  sort  of  thing 
I  have  seen  in  the  negro  quarters  of  Arkansas.  There  was 
nothing  whatever  in  this  dim  marble  prison  but  five  more  of 
these  biers.  •  It  was  a  very  solemn  place.  I  expected  that  the 
spiced  odors  of  Araby  wrere  going  to  steal  over  my  senses  now, 
but  they  did  not.  A  copper-colored  skeleton,  with  a  rag 


THE    TURKISH     BATH.  379 

around  him,  brought  me  a  glass  decanter  of  water,  with  a 
lighted  tobacco  pipe  in  the  top  of  it,  and  a  pliant  stem  a  yard 
long,  with  a  brass  mouth-piece  to  it. 

It  was  the  famous  "  narghili "  of  the  East — the  tiling  the 
Grand  Turk  smokes  in  the  pictures.  This  began  to  look  like 
luxury.  I  took  one  blast  at  it,  and  it  was  sufficient ;  the  smoke 
went  in  a  great  volume  down  into  my  stomach,  my  lungs, 
even  into  the  uttermost  parts  of  my  frame.  I  exploded  one 
mighty  cough,  and  it  was  as  if  Vesuvius  had  let  go.  For  the 
next  five  minutes  I  smoked  at  every  pore,  like  a  frame  house 
that  is  on  fire  on  the  inside.  Not  any  more  narghili  for  me. 
The  smoke  had  a  vile  taste,  and  the  taste  of  a  thousand  infidel 
tongues  that  remained  on  that  brass  mouthpiece  was  viler  still. 
I  was  getting  discouraged.  Whenever,  hereafter,  I  see  the 
cross-legged  Grand  Turk  smoking  his  narghili,  in  pretended 
bliss,  on  the  outside  of  a  paper  of  Connecticut  tobacco,  I  shall 
know  him  for  the  shameless  humbug  he  is. 

This  prison  was  filled  with  hot  air.  When  I  had  got 
warmed  up  sufficiently  to  prepare  me  for  a  still  warmer  tem 
perature,  they  took  me  where  it  \vas — into  a  marble  room, 
wet,  slippery  and  steamy,  and  laid  me  out  on  a' raised  platform 
in  the  centre.  It  was  very  warm.  Presently  my  man  sat  me 
down  by  a  tank  of  hot  water,  drenched  me  well,  gloved  his 
hand  with  a  coarse  mitten,  and  began  to  polish  me  all  over 
with  it.  I  began  to  smell  disgreeably.  The  more  he  polished 
the  worse  I  smelt.  It  wras  alarming.  I  said  to  him : 

"  I  perceive  that  I  am  pretty  far  gone.  It  is  plain  that  I 
ought  to  be  buried  without  any  unnecessary  delay.  Perhaps 
you  had  better  go  after  my  friends  at  once,  because  the  weather 
is  warm,  and  I  can  not  '  keep '  long.' " 

He  went  on  scrubbing,  and  paid  no  attention.  I  soon  saw 
that  he  was  reducing  my  size.  He  bore  hard  on  his  mitten, 
and  from  under  it  rolled  little  cylinders,  like  maccaroni.  It 
could  not  be  dirt,  for  it  was  too  white.  lie  pared  me  down  in 
this  way  for  a  long  time.  Finally  I  said : 

"  It  is  a  tedious  process.  It  will  take  hours  to  trim  me  to 
the  size  you  want  me ;  I  will  wait ;  go  and  borrow  a  jack-plane." 


380  JACK-PLANED     BY     A     NATIVE. 

He  paid  no  attention  at  all. 

After  a  while  he  brought  a  basin,  some  soap,  and  something 
that  seemed  to  be  the  tail  of  a  horse.  He  made  up  a  prodi 
gious  quantity  of  soap-suds,  deluged  me  with  them  from  head 
to  foot,  without  warning  me  to  shut  my  eyes,  and  then  swabbed 
me  viciously  with  the  horse-tail.  Then  he  left  me  there,  a 
snowy  statue  of  lather,  and  went  away.  When  I  got  tired  of 
waiting  I  went  and  hunted  him  up.  He  was  propped  against 
the  wall,  in  another  room,  asleep.  I  woke  him.  He  was  not 
disconcerted.  He  took  me  back  and  flooded  me  with  hot  wa 
ter,  then  turbaned  my  head,  swathed  me  with  dry  frable-cloths, 
and  conducted  me  to  a  latticed  chicken-coop  in  one  of  the  gal 
leries,  and  pointed  to  one  of  those  Arkansas  beds.  I  mounted 
it,  and  vaguely  expected  the  odors  of  Araby  again.  They  did 
not  come. 

The  blank,  unornamented  coop  had  nothing  about  it  of  that 
oriental  voluptuousness  one  reads  of  so  much.  It  was  more 
suggestive  of  the  county  hospital  than  any  thing  else.  The 
skinny  servitor  brought  a  narghili,  and  I  got  him  to  take  it  out 
again  without  wasting  any  time  about  it.  Then  he  brought 
the  world-renowned  Turkish  coffee  that  poets  have  sung  so 
rapturously  for  many  generations,  and  I  seized  upon  it  as  the 
last  hope  that  was  left  of  my  old  dreams  of  Eastern  luxury. 
It  was  another  fraud.  Of  all  the  unchristian  beverages  that 
ever  passed  my  lips,  Turkish  coffee  is  the  worst.  The  cup  is 
small,  it  is  smeared  with  grounds ;  the  coffee  is  black,  thick, 
unsavory  of  smell,  and  execrable  in  taste.  The  bottom  of  the 
cup  has  a  muddy  sediment  in  it  half  an  inch  deep.  This  goes 
down  your  throat,  and  portions  of  it  lodge  by  the  way,  and 
produce  a  tickling  aggravation  that  keeps  you  barking  and 
coughing  for  an  hour. 

Here  endeth  my  experience  of  the  celebrated  Turkish  bath, 
and  here  also  endeth  my  dream  of  the  bliss  the  mortal  revels 
in  who  passes  through  it.  It  is  a  malignant  swindle.  The  man 
who  enjoys  it  is  qualified  to  enjoy  any  thing  that  is  repulsive 
to  sight  or  sense,  and  he  that  can  invest  it  with  a  charm  of 
poetry  is  able  to  do  the  same  with  any  thing  else  in  the  world 
that  is  tedious,  and  wretched,  and  dismal,  and  nasty. 


CHAPTEE  XXXV. 

~TT7"E  left  a  dozen  passengers  in  Constantinople,  and  sailed 
*  *  through  the  beautiful  Bosporus  and  far  up  into  the 
Black  Sea.  We  left  them  in  the  clutches  of  the  celebrated 
Turkish  guide,  "  FAR-AWAY  MOSES,"  who  will  seduce  them  into 
buying  a  ship-load  of  ottar  of  roses,  splendid  Turkish  vest 
ments,  and  all  manner  of  curious  things  they  can  never  have 
any  use  for.  Murray's  invaluable  guide-books  have  mentioned 
Far-away  Moses'  name,  and  he  is  a  made  man.  He  rejoices 
daily  in  the  fact  that  he  is  a  recognized  celebrity.  However, 
we  can  not  alter  our  established  customs  to  please  the  whims 
of  guides ;  we  can  not  show  partialities  this  late  in  the  day. 
Therefore,  ignoring  this  fellow's  brilliant  fame,  and  ignoring 
the  fanciful  name  he  takes  such  pride  in,  we  called  him  Fer 
guson,  just  as  we  had  done  with  all  other  guides.  It  has  kept 
him  in  a  state  of  smothered  exasperation  all  the  time.  Yet  we 
meant  him  no  harm.  After  he  has  gotten  himself  up  regardless 
of  expense,  in  showy,  baggy  trowsers,  yellow,  pointed  slippers, 
fiery  fez,  silken  jacket  of  blue,  voluminous  wraist-sash  of  fancy 
Persian  stuff  filled  with  a  battery  of  silver-mounted  horse- 
pistols,  and  has  strapped  on  his  terrible  scimetar,  he  considers 
it  an  unspeakable  humiliation  to  be  called  Ferguson.  It  can 
not  be  helped.  All  guides  are  Fergusons  to  us.  We  can  not 
master  their  dreadful  foreign  names. 

Sebastopol  is  probably  the  worst  battered  town  in  Russia  or 
any  where  else.  But  we  ought  to  be  pleased  with  it,  neverthe 
less,  for  we  hare  been  in  no  country  yet  where  we  have  been 
so  kindly  received,  and  where  we  felt  that  to  be  Americans 


382 


OUR     KIND     RECEPTION     IN     RUSSIA. 


was  a  sufficient  vise  for  our  passports.     The  moment  the  anchor 
was  down,  the  Governor  of  the  town  immediately  dispatched 

an  officer  on  board  to  inquire 
if  he  could  be  of  any  assist 
ance  to  us,  and  to  invite  us  to 
make  ourselves  at  home  in  Se- 
bastopol !  If  you  know  Rus 
sia,  you  know  that  this  was  a 
wild  stretch  of  hospitality. 
They  are  usually  so  suspicious 
of  strangers  that  they  worry 
them  excessively  with  the  de 
lays  and  aggravations  incident 
to  a  complicated  passport  sys 
tem.  Had  we  come  from  any 
other  country  we  could  not 
have  had  permission  to  enter 
Sebastopol  and  leave  again 
under  three  days — but  as  it 
was,  we  were  at  liberty  to  go 
and  come  when  and  where  we 
pleased.  Every  body  in  Con 
stantinople  warned  us  to  be 
very  careful  about  our  pass 
ports,  see  that  they  were  strict 
ly  en  regie,  and  never  to  mislay  them  for  a  moment :  and  they 
told  us  of  numerous  instances  of  Englishmen  and  others  who 
were  delayed  days,  weeks,  and  even  months,  in  Sebastopol,  on 
account  of  trifling  informalities  in  their  passports,  and  for 
which  they  were  not  to  blame.  I  had  lost  my  passport,  and 
was  traveling  under  my  room-mate's,  who  stayed  behind  in 
Constantinople  to  await  our  return.  To  read  the  description 
of  him  in  that  passport  and  then  look  at  me,  any  man  could 
see  that  I  was  no  more  like  him  than  I  am  like  Hercules.  So 
I  went  into  the  harbor  of  Sebastopol  with  fear  and  trembling — 
full  of  a  vague,  horrible  apprehension  that  I  was  going  to  be 
found  out  and  hanged.  But  all  that  time  my  true  passport 


FAR-AWAY    MOSES. 


MELANCHOLY     SEBASTOPOL.  383 

had  been  floating  gallantly  overhead — and  behold  it  was  only 
our  flag.  They  never  asked  us  for  any  other. 

We  have  had  a  great  many  Russian  and  English  gentlemen 
and  ladies  on  board  to-day,  and  the  time  has  passed  cheerfully 
away.  They  were  all  happy-spirited  people,  and  I  never 
heard  our  mother  tongue  sound  so  pleasantly  as  it  did  when  it 
fell  from  those  English  lips  in  this  far-off  land.  I  talked  to 
the  Russians  a  good  deal,  just  to  be  friendly,  and  they  talked 
to  me  from  the  same  motive ;  I  am  sure  that  both  enjoyed  the 
conversation,  but  never  a  word  of  it  either  of  us  understood. 
I  did  most  of  my  talking  to  those  English  people  though,  and 
I  am  sorry  we  can  not  carry  some  of  them  along  with  us. 

We  have  gone  whithersoever  we  chose,  to-day,  and  have  met 
with  nothing  but  the  kindest  attentions.  Nobody  inquired 
whether  we  had  any  passports  or  not. 

Several  of  the  officers  of  the  Government  have  suggested 
that  we  take  the  ship  to  a  little  watering-place  thirty  miles 
from  here,  and  pay  the  Emperor  of  Russia  a  visit.  He  is  rus 
ticating  there.  These  officers  said  they  would  take  it  upon 
themselves  to  insure  us  a  cordial  reception.  They  said  if  we 
would  go,  they  would  not  only  telegraph  the  Emperor,  but 
send  a  special  courier  overland  to  announce  our  coming.  Our 
time  is  so  short,  though,  and  more  especially  our  coal  is  so 
nearly  out,  that  we  judged  it  best  to  forego  the  rare  pleasure 
of  holding  social  intercourse  with  an  Emperor. 

Ruined  Pompeii  is  in  good  condition  compared  to  Sebasto- 
pol.  Here,  you  may  look  in  whatsoever  direction  you  please, 
and  your  eye  encounters  scarcely  any  thing  but  ruin,  ruin,  ru 
in  ! — fragments  of  houses,  crumbled  walls,  torn  and  ragged  hills, 
devastation  every  where !  It  is  as  if  a  mighty  earthquake  had 
spent  all  its  terrible  forces  upon  this  one  little  spot.  Eor 
eighteen  long  months  the  storms  of  war  beat  upon  the  helpless 
town,  and  left  it  at  last  the  saddest  wreck  that  ever  the  sun 
has  looked  upon.  Not  one  solitary  house  escaped  unscathed— 
not  one  remained  habitable,  even.  Such  utter  and  complete 
ruin  one  could  hardly  conceive  of.  The  houses  had  all  been 
solid,  dressed  stone  structures ;  most  of  them  were  ploughed 


38-i  DESPERATE     FIGHTING. 

through  and  through  by  cannon  balls — unroofed  and  sliced 
clown  from  eaves  to  foundation — and  now  a  row  of  them,  half 
a  mile  long,  looks  merely  like  an  endless  procession  of  battered 
chimneys.  No  semblance  of  a  house  remains  in  such  as 
these.  Some  of  the  larger  buildings  had  corners  knocked  off": 

^*  O 

pillars  cut  in  two ;  cornices  smashed ;  holes  driven  straight 
through  the  walls.  Many  of  these  holes  are  as  round  and  as 
cleanly  cut  as  if  they  had  been  made  with  an  auger.  Others 
are  half  pierced  through,  and  the  clean  impression  is  there 
in  the  rock,  as  smooth  and  as  shapely  as  if  it  were  done  in 
putty.  Here  and  there  a  ball  still  sticks  in  a  wall,  and  from  it 
iron  tears  trickle  down  and  discolor  the  stone. 

The  battle-fields  were  pretty  close  together.  The  Malakoff 
tower  is  on  a  hill  which  is  right  in  the  edge  of  the  town.  The 
Redan  was  within  rifle-shot  of  the  Malakoff;  Inkerrnan  was  a 
mile  away ;  and  Balaklava  removed  but  an  hour's  ride.  The 
French  ^trenches,  by  which  they  approached  and  invested  the 
Malakoff  were  carried  so  close  under  its  sloping  sides  that 
one  might  have  stood  by  the  Russian  guns  and  tossed  a  stone 
into  them.  Repeatedly,  during  three  terrible  days,  they 
swarmed  up  the  little  Malakoff  hill,  and  were  beaten  back 
writh  terrible  slaughter.  Finally,  they  captured  the  place,  and 
drove  the  Russians  out,  who  then  tried  to  retreat  into  the  town, 
but  the  English  had  taken  the  Redan,  and  shut  them  off  with 
a  wall  of  flame ;  there  was  nothing  for  them  to  do  but  go  back 
and  retake  the  Malakoff  or  die  under  its  guns.  They  did  go 
back  ;  they  took  the  Malakoff  and  retook  it  two  or  three  times, 
but  their  desperate  valor  could  not  avail,  and  they  had  to  give 
up  at  last. 

These  fearful  fields,  where  such  tempests  of  death  used  to 
rage,  are  peaceful  enough  now ;  no  sound  is  heard,  hardly  a 
living  thing  moves  about  them,  they  are  lonely  and  silent — 
their  desolation  is  complete. 

There  was  nothing  else  to  do,  and  so  every  body  went  to 
hunting  relics.  They  have  stocked  the  ship  with  them.  They 
brought  them  from  the  Malakoff,  from  the  Redan,  Inkerman, 
Balaklava — every  where.  They  have  brought  cannon  balls, 


DESPERATE     FIGHTING.  385 

broken  ramrods,  fragments  of  shell — iron  enough  to  freight  a 
sloop.  Some  have  even  brought  bones — brought  them  labori 
ously  from  great  distances,  and  were  grieved  to  hear  the  sur 
geon  pronounce  them  only  bones  of  mules  and  oxen.  I  knew 
Blucher  would  not  lose  an  opportunity  like  this.  He  brought 
a  sack  full  on  board  and  was  going  for  another.  I  prevailed 
upon  him  not  to  go.  He  has  already  turned  his  state-room 
into  a  museum  of  worthless  trumpery,  which  he  has  gathered 
up  in  his  travels.  He  is  labeling  his  trophies,  now.  I  picked 
up  one  a  while  ago,  and  found  it  marked  "  Fragment  of  a  Rus 
sian  General."  I  carried  it  out  to  get  a  better  light  upon  it — 
it  was  nothing  but  a  couple  of  teeth  and  part  of  the  jaw-bone 
of  a  horse.  I  said  with  some  asperity  : 

"  Fragment  of  a  Russian  General !  This 
is  absurd.  Are  you  never  going  to  learn 
any  sense  ?" 

He  only  said :  "  Go  slow — the  old  -woman 
won't  know  any  different."  [His  aunt.] 

This  person  gathers  mementoes  with  a  A  FRAGMENT. 
perfect  recklessness,  now-a-days ;  mixes 
them  all  up  together, "and  then  serenely  labels  them  without 
any  regard  to  truth,  propriety,  or  even  plausibility.  I  have 
found  him  breaking  a  stone  in  two,  and  labeling  half  of  it 
"  Chunk  busted  from  the  pulpit  of  Demosthenes,"  and  the 
other  half  "  Darnick  from  the  Tomb  of  Abelard  and  Heloise." 
I  have  known  him  to  gather  up  a  handful  of  pebbles  by  the 
roadside,  arid  bring  them  on  board  ship  and  label  them  as  com 
ing  from  twenty  celebrated  localities  five  hundred  miles  apart. 
I  remonstrate  against  these  outrages  upon  reason  and  truth,  of 
course,  but  it  does  no  good.  I  get  the  same  tranquil,  unan 
swerable  reply  every  time : 

"  It  don't  signify — the  old  woman  won't  know  any  different." 

Ever  since  we  three  or  four  fortunate  ones  made  the  mid 
night  trip  to  Athens,  it  has  afforded  him  genuine  satisfaction 
to  give  every  body  in  the  ship  a  pebble  from  the  Mars-hill 
where  St.  Paul  preached.  He  got  all  those  pebbles  on  the  sea 
shore,  abreast  the  ship,  but  professes  to  have  gathered  them 

25 


380 


DESPERATE     FIGHTING. 


from  one  of  our  party.  However,  it  is  not  of  any  use  for  me 
to  expose  the  deception — it  affords  him  pleasure,  and  does  no 
harm  to  any  body.  He  says  he  never  expects  to  run  out  of 
mementoes  of  St.  Paul  as  long  as  he  is  in  reach  of  a  sand 
bank.  Well,  he  is  no  worse  than  others.  I  notice  that  all 
travelers  supply  deficiencies  in  their  collections  in  the  same 
way.  I  shall  never  have  any  confidence  in  such  things  again 
while  I  live. 


CHAPTEE  XXXVI. 

~TTT~E  have  got  so  far  east,  now — a  hundred  and  fifty-five 
*  V  degrees  of  longitude  from  San  Francisco — that  my 
watch  can  not  "  keep  the  hang  "  of  the  time  any  more.  It  has 
grown  discouraged,  and  stopped.  I  think  it  did  a  wise  thing. 
The  difference  in  time  between  Sebastopol  and  the  Pacific 
coast  is  enormous.  When  it  is  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  here, 
it  is  somewhere  about  week  before  last  in  California.  We  are 
excusable  for  getting  a  little  tangled  as  to  time.  These  dis 
tractions  and  distresses  about  the  time  have  worried  me  so 
much  that  I  was  afraid  my  mind  was  so  much  affected  that  I 
never  would  have  any  appreciation  of  time  again ;  but  when 
I  noticed  how  handy  I  was  yet  about  comprehending  when  it 
was  dinner-time,  a  blessed  tranquillity  settled  down  upon  me, 
and  I  am  tortured  with  doubts  and  fears  no  more. 

Odessa  is  about  twenty  hours'  run  from  Sebastopol,  and  is  the 
most  northerly  port  in  the  Black  Sea.  We  came  here  to  get  coal, 
principally.  The  city  has  a  population  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty-three  thousand,  and  is  growing  faster  than  any  other 
small  city  out  of  America.  It  is  a  free  port,  and  is  the  great 
grain  mart  of  this  particular  part  of  the  world.  Its  roadstead 
is  full  of  ships.  Engineers  are  at  work,  now,  turning  the  open 
roadstead  into  a  spacious  artificial  harbor.  It  is  to  be  almost 
inclosed  by  massive  stone  piers,  one  of  which  will  extend  into 
the  sea  over  three  thousand  feet  in  a  straight  line. 

I  have  not  felt  so  much  at  home  for  a  long  time  as  I  did  when  I 
"  raised  the  hill "  and  stood  in  Odessa  for  the  first  time.  It 
looked  just  like  an  American  city ;  fine,  broad  streets,  and 


388  IMITATION    AMERICAN     TOWN. 

straight  as  well ;  low  houses,  (two  or  three  stories,)  wide,  neat, 
and  free  from  any  quaintness  of  architectural  ornamentation ; 
locust  trees  bordering  the  sidewalks  (they  call  them  acacias ;) 
a  stirring,  business-look  about  the  streets  and  the  stores ;  fast 
walkers ;  a  familiar  new  look  about  the  houses  and  every 
thing ;  yea,  and  a  driving  and  smothering  cloud  of  dust  that 
was  so  like  a  message  from  our  own  dear  native  land  that  we 
could  hardly  refrain  from  shedding  a  few  grateful  tears  and 
execrations  in  the  old  time-honored  American  way.  Look  up 
the  street  or  down  the  street,  this  way  or  that  way,  we  saw 
only  America !  There  was  not  one  thing  to  remind  us  that  we 
were  in  Russia.  We  walked  for  some  little  distance,  reveling 
in  this  home  vision,  and  then  we  came  upon  a  church  and  a 
hack-driver,  and  presto  !  the  illusion  vanished !  The  church 
had  a  slender-spired  dome  that  rounded  inward  at  its  base,  and 
looked  like  a  turnip  turned  upside  down,  and  the  hackman 
seemed  to  be  dressed  in  a  long  petticoat  without  any  hoops. 
These  things  were  essentially  foreign,  and  so  were  the  carriages 
— but  every  body  knows  about  these  things,  and  there  is  no 
occasion  for  my  describing  them. 

"We  were  only  to  stay  here  a  day  and  a  night  and  take  in  coal ; 
we  consulted  the  guide-books  and  were  rejoiced  to  know  that 
there  were  no  sights  in  Odessa  to  see ;  and  so  we  had  one  good, 
untrammeled  holyday  on  our  hands,  with  nothing  to  do  but 
idle  about  the  city  and  enjoy  ourselves.  We  sauntered  through 
the  markets  and  criticised  the  fearful  and  wonderful  costumes 
from  the  back  country  ;  examined  the  populace  as  far  as  eyes 
could  do  it ;  and  closed  the  entertainment  with  an  ice-cream 
debauch.  We  do  not  get  ice-cream  every  where,  and  so,  when 
we  do,  we  are  apt  to  dissipate  to  excess.  We  never  cared  any 
thing  about  ice-cream  at  home,  but  we  look  upon  it  with  a  sort 
of  idolatry  now  that  it  is  so  scarce  in  these  red-hot  climates  of 
the  East. 

We  only  found  two  pieces  of  statuary,  and  this  was  another 
blessing.  One  was  a  bronze  image  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
grand-nephew  of  the  splendid  Cardinal.  It  stood  in  a  spacious, 
handsome  promenade,  overlooking  the  sea,  and  from  its  base  a 


PUBLIC     INGRATITUDE.  389 

vast  flight  of  stone  steps  led  down  to  the  harbor — two  hundred 
of  them,  fifty  feet  long,  and  a  wide  landing  at  the  bottom  of 
every  twenty.  It  is  a  noble  staircase,  and  from  a  distance  the 
people  toiling  up  it  looked  like  insects.  I  mention  this  statue 
and  this  stairway  because  they  have  their  story.  Richelieu 
founded  Odessa — wratched  over  it  with  paternal  care — labored 
with  a  fertile  brain  and  a  wise  understanding  for  its  best  inter 
ests — spent  his  fortune  freely  to  the  same  end — endowed  it 
with  a  sound  prosperity,  and  one  which  will  yet  make  it  one 
of  the  great  cities  of  the  Old  World — built  this  noble  stairway 

with  money  from  his  own  private  purse — and .     Well,  the 

people  for  whom  he  had  done  so  much,  let  him  walk  down 
these  same  steps,  one  day,  unattended,  old,  poor,  without  a 
second  coat  to  his  back  ;  and  when,  years  afterwards,  he  died 
in  Sebastopol  in  poverty  and  neglect,  they  called  a  meeting, 
subscribed  liberally,  and  immediately  erected  this  tasteful 
monument  to  his  memory,  and  named  a  great  street  after  him. 
It  reminds  me  of  what  Robert  Burns'  mother  said  when  they 
erected  a  stately  monument  to  his  memory  :  "  Ah,  Robbie,  ye 
asked  them  for  bread  and  they  hae  gi'en  ye  a  stane." 

The  people  of  Odessa  have  warmly  recommended  us  to  go 
and  call  on  the  Emperor,  as  did  the  Sebastopolians.  They 
have  telegraphed  his  Majesty,  and  he  has  signified  his  willing 
ness  to  grant  us  an  audience.  So  we  are  getting  up  the  an 
chors  and  preparing  to  sail  to  his  watering-place.  What  a 
scratching  around  there  will  be,  now !  what  a  holding  of  im 
portant  meetings  and  appointing  of  solemn  committees ! — and 
what  a  furbishing  up  of  claw-hammer  coats  and  white  silk 
neck-ties !  As  this  fearful  ordeal  we  are  about  to  pass  through 
pictures  itself  to  my  fancy  in  all  its  dread  sublimity,  I  begin 
to  feel  my  fierce  desire  to  converse  with  a  genuine  Emperor 
cooling  down  and  passing  away.  What  am  I  to  do  with  my 
hands  ?  What  am  I  to  do  with  my  feet  ?  What  in  the  world 
am  I  to  do  with  myself  ? 


OHAPTEE   XXXVII. 

WE  anchored  here  at  Yalta,  Russia,  two  or  three  days 
ago.  To  me  the  place  was  a  vision  of  the  Sierras. 
The  tall,  gray  mountains  that  back  it,  their  sides  bristling  with 
pines — cloven  with  ravines — here  and  there  a  hoary  rock  tow 
ering  into  view — long,  straight  streaks  sweeping  down  from 
the  summit  to  the  sea,  marking  the  passage  of  some  avalanche 
of  former  times — all  these  were  as  like  what  one  sees  in  the 
Sierras  as  if  the  one  were  a  portrait  of  the  other.  The  little 
village  of  Yalta  nestles  at  the  foot  of  an  amphitheatre  which 
slopes  backward  and  upward  to  the  wall  of  hills,  and  looks  as 
if  it  might  have  sunk  quietly  down  to  its  present  position  from 
a  higher  elevation.  This  depression  is  covered  with  the  great 
parks  and  gardens  of  noblemen,  and  through  the  mass  of  green 
foliage  the  bright  colors  of  their  palaces  bud  out  here  and  there 
like  flowers.  It  is  a  beautiful  spot. 

"We  had  the  United  States  Consul  on  board — the  Odessa 
Consul.  We  assembled  in  the  cabin  and  commanded  him  to 
tell  us  what  we  must  do  to  be  saved,  and  tell  us  quickly.  He 
made  a  speech.  The  first  thing  he  said  fell  like  a  blight  on 
every  hopeful  spirit :  he  had  never  seen  a  court  reception. 
(Three  groans  for  the  Consul.)  But  he  said  he  had  seen  recep 
tions  at  the  Governor-General's  in  Odessa,  and  had  often  list 
ened  to  people's  experiences  of  receptions  at  the  Kussian  and 
other  courts,  and  believed  he  knew  very  well  what  sort  of 
ordeal  we  were  about  to  essay.  (Hope  budded  again.)  He 
said  we  were  many ;  the  summer-palace  was  small — a  mere 


PRACTICING     FOR     THE     ORDEAL.  391 

mansion ;  doubtless  we  should  be  received  in  summer  fashion 
— in  the  garden  ;  we  would  stand  in  a  row,  all  the  gentlemen 
in  swallow-tail  coats,  white  kids,  and  white  neck- ties,  and  the 
ladies  in  light-colored  silks,  or  something  of  that  kind  ;  at  the 
proper  moment — 12  meridian — the  Emperor,  attended  by  his 
suite  arrayed  in  splendid  uniforms,  would  appear  and  walk 
slowly  along  the  line,  bowing  to  some,  and  saying  two  or  three 
words  to  others.  At  the  moment  his  Majesty  appeared,  a  uni 
versal,  delighted,  enthusiastic  smile  ought  to  break  out  like  a 
rash  among  the  passengers — a  smile  of  love,  of  gratification, 
of  admiration — and  with  one  accord,  the  party  must  begin  to 
bow — not  obsequiously,  but  respectfully,  and  with  dignity  ;  at 
the  end  of  fifteen  minutes  the  Emperor  would  go  in  the  house, 
and  we  could  run  along  home  again.  We  felt  immensely  re 
lieved.  It  seemed,  in  a  manner,  easy.  There  was  not  a  man 
in  the  party  but  believed  that  with  a  little  practice  he  could 
stand  in  a  row,  especially  if  there  were  others  along ;  there 
was  not  a  man  but  believed  he  could  bow  without  tripping  on 
his  coat  tail  and  breaking  his  neck ;  in  a  word,  we  came  to 
believe  we  were  equal  to  any  item  in  the  performance  except 
that  complicated  smile.  The  Consul  also  said  we  ought  to 
draft  a  little  address  to  the  Emperor,  and  present  it  to  one  of 
his  aides-de-camp,  who  would  forward  it  to  him  at  the  proper 
time.  Therefore,  five  gentlemen  were  appointed  to  prepare 
the  document,  and  the  fifty  others  went  sadly  smiling  about 
the  ship — practicing.  During  the  next  twelve  hours  we  had 
the  general  appearance,  somehow,  of  being  at  a  funeral,  where 
every  body  was  sorry  the  death  had  occurred,  but  glad  it 
was  over — where  every  body  was  smiling,  and  yet  broken 
hearted. 

A  committee  went  ashore  to  wait  on  his  Excellency  the  Gov 
ernor-General,  and  learn  our  fate.  At  the  end  of  three  hours 
of  boding  suspense,  they  came  back  and  said  the  Emperor 
would  receive  us  at  noon  the  next  day — would  send  carnages 
for  us — would  hear  the  address  in  person.  The  Grand  Duke 
Michael  hacf  sent  to  invite  us  to  his  palace  also.  Any  man. 
could  see  that  there  was  an  intention  here  to  show  that  Bussia's- 


392 


RECEIVED  BY  THE  EMPEROR. 


friendship  for  America  was  so  genuine  as  to  render  even  her 
private  citizens  objects  worthy  of  kindly  attentions. 

At  the  appointed  hour  we  drove  out  three  miles,  and  assem 
bled  in  the  handsome  garden  in  front  of  the  Emperor's  palace. 


YALTA,    FROM    TilE   EMI'EROR'S   PALACE. 

We  formed  a  circle  under  the  trees  before  the  door,  for  there 
was  no  one  room  in  the  house  able  to  accommodate  our  three 
score  persons  comfortably,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the  imperial 
family  came  out  bowing  and  smiling,  and  stood  in  our  midst. 
A  number  of  great  dignitaries  of  the  Empire,  in  undress  uni 
forms,  came  with  them.  With  every  bow,  his  Majesty  said  a 
word  of  welcome.  I  copy  these  speeches.  There  is  character 
in  them — Russian  character — which  is  politeness  itself,  and  the 
genuine  article.  The  French  are  polite,  but  it  is  often  mere 
ceremonious  politeness,  A  Russian  imbues  his  polite  things 
with  a  heartiness,  both  of  phrase  and  expression,  that  compels 


RECEIVED     BY    THE     EMPEROR. 


393 


belief  in  their  sincerity.     As  I  was  saying,  the  Czar  punctu 
ated  his  speeches  with  bows  : 

"  Good  morning — I  am  glad  to  see  you — I  am  gratified — I 
am  delighted — I  am  happy  to  receive  you !" 

All  took  off  their  hats,  and  the  Consul  inflicted  the  address 
on  him.  He  bore  it  with  unflinching  fortitude  ;  then  took  the 
rusty -looking  document  and  handed  it  to  some  great  officer  or 
other,  to  be  filed  away 
among  the  archives  of 
Russia — in  the  stove.  He 
thanked  us  for  the  ad 
dress,  and  said  he  was 
very  much  pleased  to  see 
us,  especially  as  such 
friendly  relations  existed 
between  Russia  and  the 
United  States.  The  Em 
press  said  the  Americans 
were  favorites  in  Russia, 
and  she  hoped  the  Rus 
sians  were  similarly  re 
garded  in  America. 
These  were  all  the  speech 
es  that  were  made,  and  I 
recommend  them  to  parties  who  present  policemen  \vith  gold 
watches,  as  models  of  brevity  and  point.  After  this  the  Em 
press  wrent  and  talked  sociably  (for  an  Empress)  with  various 
ladies  around  the  circle  ;  several  gentlemen  entered  into  a  dis 
jointed  general  conversation  with  the  Emperor ;  the  Dukes 
and  Princes,  Admirals  and  Maids  of  Honor  dropped  into  free- 
and-easy  chat  with  first  one  and  then  another  of  our  party,  and 
whoever  chose  stepped  forward  and  spoke  with  the  modest 
little  Grand  Duchess  Marie,  the  Czar's  daughter.  She  is  four 
teen  years  old,  light-haired,  blue-eyed,  unassuming  and  pretty. 
Every  body  talks  English. 

The  Emperor  wore  a  cap,  frock  coat  and  pantaloons,  all  of 
some  kind  of  plain  white  drilling — cotton  or  linen — and  sport- 


EMPEROR   OF   RUSSIA. 


394  CONCENTRATED    POWER. 

ed  no  jewelry  or  any  insignia  whatever  of  rank.  No  costume 
could  be  less  ostentatious.  He  is  very  tall  and  spare,  and  a 
determined-looking  man,  though  a  very  pleasant-looking  one, 
nevertheless.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  he  is  kind  and  affectionate. 
There  is  something  very  noble  in  his  expression  when  his  cap 
is  off.  There  is  none  of  that  cunning  in  his  eye  that  all  of  us 
noticed  in  Louis  Napoleon's. 

The  Empress  and  the  little  Grand  Duchess  wore  simple  suits 
of  foulard  (or  foulard  silk,  I  don't  know  which  is  proper,)  with 
a  small  blue  spot  in  it ;  the  dresses  were  trimmed  with  blue ; 
both  ladies  wore  broad  blue  sashes  about  their  waists ;  linen 
collars  and  clerical  ties  of  muslin ;  low-crowned  straw-hats 
trimmed  with  blue  velvet ;  parasols  and  flesh-colored  gloves. 
The  Grand  Duchess  had  no  heels  on  her  shoes.  I  do  not  know 
this  of  my  own  knowledge,  but  one  of  our  ladies  told  me  so. 
I  was  not  looking  at  her  shoes.  I  was  glad  to  observe  that  she 
wore  her  own  hair,  plaited  in  thick  braids  against  the  back  of 
her  head,  instead  of  the  uncomely  thing  they  call  a  waterfall, 
which  is  about  as  much  like  a  waterfall  as  a  canvas-covered 
ham  is  like  a  cataract.  Taking  the  kind  expression  that  is  in 
the  Emperor's  face  and  the  gentleness  that  is  in  his  young 
daughter's  into  consideration,  I  wondered  if  it  would  not  tax 
the  Czar's  firmness  to  the  utmost  to  condemn  a  supplicating 
wretch  to  misery  in  the  wastes  of  Siberia  if  she  pleaded  for 
him.  Every  time  their  eyes  met,  I  saw  more  and  more  what 
a  tremendous  power  that  weak,  diffident  school-girl  could 
wield  if  she  chose  to  do  it.  Many  and  many  a  time  she  might 
rule  the  Autocrat  of  Russia,  whose  lightest  word  is  law  to  sev 
enty  millions  of  human  beings !  She  was  only  a  girl,  and  she 
looked  like  a  thousand  others  I  have  seen,  but  never  a  girl 
provoked  such  a  novel  and  peculiar  interest  in  me  before.  A 
strange,  new  sensation  is  a  rare  thing  in  this  hum-drum  life, 
and  I  had  it  here.  There  was  nothing  stale  or  worn  out  about 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  the  situation  and  the  circumstances 
created.  It  seemed  strange — stranger  than  I  can  tell — to 
think  that  the  central  figure  in  the  cluster  of  men  and  women, 
chatting  here  under  the  trees  like  the  most  ordinary  individual 


AT    THE    CROWN    PRINCE'S.  395 

in  the  land,  was  a  man  who  could  open  his  lips  and  ships 
would  fly  through  the  waves,  locomotives  would  speed  over  the 
plains,  couriers  would  hurry  from  village  to  village,  a  hundred 
telegraphs  would  flash  the  word  to  the  four  corners  of  an  Em 
pire  that  stretches  its  vast  proportions  over  a  seventh  part  of 
the  habitable  globe,  and  a  countless  multitude  of  men  would 
spring  to  do  his  bidding.  I  had  a  sort  of  vague  desire  to  ex 
amine  his  hands  and  see  if  they  were  of  flesh  and  blood,  like 
other  men's.  Here  was  a  man  who  could  do  this  wonderful 
thing,  and  yet  if  I  chose  I  could  knock  him  down.  The  case 
was  plain,  but  it  seemed  preposterous,  nevertheless — as  prepos 
terous  as  trying  to  knock  down  a  mountain  or  wipe  out  a  con 
tinent.  If  this  man  sprained  his  ankle,  a  million  miles  of 
telegraph  would  carry  the  news  over  mountains — valleys — 
uninhabited  deserts — under  the  trackless  sea — and  ten  thousand 
newspapers  would  prate  of  it ;  if  he  were  grievously  ill,  all 
the  nations  would  know  it  before  the  sun  rose  again  ;  if  he 
dropped  lifeless  where  he  stood,  his  fall  might  shake  the 
thrones  of  half  a  world  !  If  I  could  have  stolen  his  coat,  I 
would  have  done  it.  When  I  meet  a  man  like  that,  I  want 
something  to  remember  him  by. 

As  a  general  thing,  we  have  been  shown  through  palaces  by 
some  plush-legged  filagreed  flunkey  or  other,  who  charged  a 
franc  for  it ;  but  after  talking  with  the  company  half  an  hour, 
the  Emperor  of  Russia  and  his  family  conducted  us  all  through 
their  mansion  themselves.  They  made  no  charge.  They 
seemed  to  take  a  real  pleasure  in  it. 

We  spent  half  an  hour  idling  through  the  palace,  admiring 
the  cosy  apartments  and  the  rich  but  eminently  home-like 
appointments  of  the  place,  and  then  the  Imperial  family  bade 
our  party  a  kind  good-bye,  and  proceeded  to  count  the  spoons. 

An  invitation  was  extended  to  us  to  visit  the  palace  of  the 
eldest  son,  the  Crown  Prince  of  Russia,  which  was  near  at 
hand.  The  young  man  was  absent,  but  the  Dukes  and  Coun 
tesses  and  Princes  went  over  the  premises  with  us  as  leisurely 
as  was  the  case  at  the  Emperor's,  and  conversation  continued 
as  lively  as  ever. 


31)6  AT     THE     GKAND     DUKEJS. 

It  was  a  little  after  one  o'clock,  now.  We  drove  to  the 
Grand  Duke  Michael's,  a  mile  away,  in  response  to  his  invita 
tion,  previously  given. 

We  arrived  in  twenty  minutes  from  the  Emperor's.  It  is  a 
lovely  place.  The  beautiful  palace  nestles  among  the  grand 
old  groves  of  the  park,  the  park  sits  in  the  lap  of  the  pictu 
resque  crags  and  hills,  and  both  look  out  upon  the  breezy 
ocean.  In  the  park  are  rustic  seats,  here  and  there,  in  se 
cluded  nooks  that  are  dark  with  shade  ;  there  are  rivulets  of 
crystal  wrater ;  there  are  lakelets,  with  inviting,  grassy  banks  ; 
there  are  glimpses  of  sparkling  cascades  through  openings  in 
the  wilderness  of  foliage ;  there  are  streams  of  clear  wrater 
gushing  from  mimic  knots  on  the  trunks  of  forest  trees ;  there 
are  miniature  marble  temples  perched  upon  gray  old  crags ; 
there  are  airy  lookouts  whence  one  may  gaze  upon  a  broad 
expanse  of  landscape  and  ocean.  The  palace  is  modeled  after 
the  choicest  forms  of  Grecian  architecture,  and  its  wide  colon 
nades  surround  a  central  court  that  is  banked  with  rare 
flowers  that  fill  the  place  with  their  fragrance,  and  in  their 
midst  springs  a  fountain  that  cools  the  summer  air,  and  may 
possibly  breed  mosquitoes,  but  I  do  not  think  it  does. 

The  Grand  Duke  and  his  Duchess  came  out,  and  the  pre 
sentation  ceremonies  were  as  simple  as  they  had  been  at  the 
Emperor's.  In  a  few  minutes,  conversation  was  under  way,  as 
before.  The  Empress  appeared  in  the  verandah,  and  the  little 
Grand  Duchess  came  out  into  the  crowd.  They  had  beaten 
us  there.  In  a  few  minutes,  the  Emperor  carne  himself  on 
horseback.  It  was  very  pleasant.  You  can  appreciate  it  if 
you  have  ever  visited  royalty  and  felt  occasionally  that  pos 
sibly  you  might  be  wearing  out  your  welcome — though  as  a 
general  thing,  I  believe,  royalty  is  not  scrupulous  about  dis 
charging  you  when  it  is  done  with  you. 

The  Grand  Duke  is  the  third  brother  of  the  Emperor,  is 
about  thirty-seven  years  old,  perhaps,  and  is  the  princeliest 
figure  in  Russia.  He  is  even  taller  than  the  Czar,  as  straight 
as  an  Indian,  and  bears  himself  like  one  of  those  gorgeous 
knights  we  read  about  in  romances  of  the  Crusades.  He  looks 


AT    THE     GRAND     DUKE'S.  397 

like  a  great-hearted  fellow  who  would  pitch  an  enemy  into  the 
river  in  a  moment,  and  then  jump  in  and  risk  his  life  fishing 
him  out  again.  The  stories  they  tell  of  him  show  him  to  be 
of  a  brave  and  generous  nature.  He  must  have  been  desirous 
of  proving  that  Americans  were  welcome  guests  in  the  imperial 
palaces  of  Russia,  because  he  rode  all  the  way  to  Yalta  and 
escorted  our  procession  to  the  Emperor's  himself,  and  kept  his 
aids  scurrying  about,  clearing  the  road  and  offering  assistance 
wherever  it  could  be  needed.  We  were  rather  familiar  with 
him  then,  because  we  did  not  know  who  he  was.  We  recog 
nized  him  now,  and  appreciated  the  friendly  spirit  that 
prompted  him  to  do  us  a  favor  that  any  other  Grand  Duke  in 
the  world  would  have  doubtless  declined  to  do.  He  had  plenty 
of  servitors  whom  he  could  have  sent,  but  he  chose  to  attend 
to  the  matter  himself. 

The  Grand  Duke  was  dressed  in  the  handsome  and  showy 
uniform  of  a  Cossack  officer.  The  Grand  Duchess  had  on  a 
white  alpaca  robe,  with  the  seams  and  gores  trimmed  with 
black  barb  lace,  and  a  little  gray  hat  with  a  feather  of  the  same 
color.  •  She  is  young,  rather  pretty  modest  and  unpretending, 
and  full  of  winning  politeness. 

Our  party  walked  all  through  the  house,  and  then  the  nobil 
ity  escorted  them  all  over  the  grounds,  and  finally  brought 
them  back  to  the  palace  about  half-past  two  o'clock  to  break 
fast.  They  called  it  breakfast,  but  we  would  have  called  it 
luncheon.  It  consisted  of  two  kinds  of  wine ;  tea,  bread, 
cheese,  and  cold  meats,  and  was  served  on  the  centre-tables  in 
the  reception  room  and  the  verandahs — anywhere  that  was 
convenient ;  there  was  no  ceremony.  It  was  a  sort  of  picnic. 
I  had  heard  before  that  we  were  to  breakfast  there,  but  Blucher 
said  he  believed  Baker's  boy  had  suggested  it  to  his  Imperial 
Highness.  I  think  not — though  it  would  be  like  him.  Baker's 
boy  is  the  famine-breeder  of  the  ship.  He  is  always  hungry. 
They  say  he  goes  about  the  state-rooms  when  the  passengers 
are  out,  and  eats  up  all  the  soap.  And  they  say  he  eats 
oakum.  They  say  he  will  eat  any  thing  he  can  get  between 
meals,  but  he  prefers  oakum.  He  does  not  like  oakum  for 


398  THEATRICAL    MONARCHS    EXPOSED. 

dinner,  but  he  likes  it  for  a  lunch,  at  odd  hours,  or  any  thing 
that  way.  It  makes  him  very  disagreeable,  because  it  makes 
his  breath  bad,  and  keeps  his  teeth  all  stuck  up  with  tar. 
Baker's  boy  may  have  suggested  the  breakfast,  but  I  hope  he 
did  not.  It  went  off  well,  anyhow.  The  illustrious  host 
moved  about  from  place  to  place,  and  helped  to  destroy  the 
provisions  and  keep  the  conversation  lively,  and  the  Grand 
Duchess  talked  with  the  verandah  parties  and  such  as  had  sat 
isfied  their  appetites  and  straggled  out  from  the  reception 
room. 

The  Grand  Duke's  tea  was  delicious.  They  give  one  a  lemon 
to  squeeze  into  it,  or  iced  milk,  if  he  prefers  it.  The  former  is 
best.  This  tea  is  brought  overland  from  China.  It  injures 
the  article  to  transport  it  by  sea. 

When  it  was  time  to  go,  we  bade  our  distinguished  hosts 
good-bye,  and  they  retired  happy  and  contented  to  their  apart 
ments  to  count  their  spoons. 

We  had  spent  the  best  part  of  half  a  day  in  the  home  of 
royalty,  and  had  been  as  cheerful  and  comfortable  all  the  time 
as  we  could  have  been  in  the  ship.  I  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  being  cheerful  in  Abraham's  bosom  as  in  the  palace 
of  an  Emperor.  I  supposed  that  Emperors  were  terrible  peo 
ple.  I  thought  they  never  did  any  thing  but  wear  magnificent 
crowns  and  red  velvet  dressing-go wns  with  dabs  of  wool  sewed 
on  them  in  spots,  and  sit  on  thrones  and  scowl  at  the  flunkies 
and  the  people  in  the  parquette,  and  order  Dukes  and  Duch 
esses  off  to  execution.  I  find,  however,  that  when  one  is  so 
fortunate  as  to  get  behind  the  scenes  and  see  them  at  home 
and  in  the  privacy  of  their  firesides,  they  are  strangely  like 
common  mortals.  They  are  pleasanter  to  look  upon  then  than 
they  are  in  their  theatrical  aspect.  It  seems  to  come  as  nat 
ural  to  them  to  dress  and  act  like  other  people  as  it  is  to  put 
a  friend's  cedar  pencil  in  your  pocket  when  you  are  done  using 
it.  But  I  can  never  have  any  confidence  in  the  tinsel  kings  of 
the  theatre  after  this.  It  will  be  a  great  loss.  I  used  to  take 
such  a  thrilling  pleasure  in  them.  But,  hereafter,  I  will  turn 
me  sadly  away  and  say ; 


TIIEATKICAL     MONARCHS     EXPOSED. 


399 


"  This  does  not  answer — this  isn't  the  style  of  king  that  / 
am  acquainted  with." 

When  they  swagger  around  the  stage  in  jeweled  crowns  and 
splendid 
robes,  I 
shall  feel 
bound  to 
observe 
that  all  the 
Emperors 
that  ever  / 
was  per 
sonally  ac 
quainted 
with  wore 
the  com 
monest  sort 
of  clothes, 
and  did  not 
swagger. 
And  when 
they  come 
on  the  stage 
a  1 1  e  n  d  ed 
by  a  vast 
body-guard 
of  stipes  in 
helmets 

and  tin  breastplates,  it  will  be  my  duty  as  well  as  my  pleasure 
to  inform  the  ignorant  that  no  crowned  head  of  my  acquaint 
ance  has  a  soldier  any  where  about  his  house  or  his  person. 

Possibly  it  may  be  thought  that  our  party  tarried  too  long, 
or  did  other  improper  things,  but  such  was  not  the  case.  The 
company  felt  that  they  were  occupying  an  unusually  respon 
sible  position — they  were  representing  the  people  of  America, 
not  the  Government — and  therefore  they  were  careful  to  do 
their  best  to  perform  their  high  mission  with  credit. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Imperial  families,  no  doubt,  consid- 


TINSEL    KING. 


400  SAVED    AS    BY    FIRE. 

ered  that  in  entertaining  us  they  were  more  especially  enter 
taining  the  people  of  America  than  they  could  by  showering 
attentions  on  a  whole  platoon  of  ministers  plenipotentiary ; 
and  therefore  they  gave  to  the  event  its  fullest  significance,  as 
an  expression  of  good  will  and  friendly  feeling  toward  the  en 
tire  country.  We  took  the  kindnesses  we  received  as  atten 
tions  thus  directed,  of  course,  and  not  to  ourselves  as  a  party. 
That  we  felt  a  personal  pride  in  being  received  as  the  repre 
sentatives  of  a  nation,  we  do  not  deny;  that  we  felt  a  national 
pride  in  the  warm  cordiality  of  that  reception,  can  not  be 
doubted. 

Our  poet  has  been  rigidly  suppressed,  from  the  time  we  let 
go  the  anchor.  When  it  was  announced  that  we  were  going 
to  visit  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  the  fountains  of  his  great  deep 
were  broken  up,  and  he  rained  ineffable  bosh  for  four-and- 
twenty  hours.  Our  original  anxiety  as  to  what  we  were  going 
to  do  with  ourselves,  was  suddenly  transformed  into  anxiety 
about  what  we  were  going  to  do  with  our  poet.  The  problem 
was  solved  at  last.  Two  alternatives  were  offered  him — he 
must  either  swear  a  dreadful  oath  that  he  would  not  issue  a 
line  of  his  poetry  while  he  was  in  the  Czar's  dominions,  or  else 
remain  under  guard  on  board  the  ship  until  we  were  safe  at 
Constantinople  again.  He  fought  the  dilemma  long,  but  yielded 
at  last.  It  was  a  great  deliverance.  Perhaps  the  savage 
reader  would  like  a  specimen  of  his  style.  I  do  not  mean  this 
term  to  be  offensive.  I  only  use  it  because  "  the  gentle  reader" 
has  been  used  so  often  that  any  change  from  it  can  not  but  be 
refreshing : 

"Save  iis  and  sanctify  us,  and  finally,  then, 
See  good  provisions  we  enjoy  while  we  journey  to  Jerusalem. 
For  so  man  proposes,  which  it  is  most  true, 
And  time  will  wait  for  none,  nor  for  us  too." 

The  sea  has  been  unusually  rough  all  day.  However,  we 
have  had  a  lively  time  of  it,  anyhow.  We  have  had  quite  a 
run  of  visitors.  The  Governor-General  came,  and  we  received 
him  with  a  salute  of  nine  guns.  He  brought  his  family  with 
him.  I  observed  that  carpets  were  spread  from  the  pier-head 


ARISTOCRATIC     VISITORS.  401 

to  his  carriage  for  him  to  walk  on,  though  I  have  seen  him 
walk  there  without  any  carpet  when  he  was  not  on  business. 
I  thought  may  be  he  had  what  the  accidental  insurance  people 
might  call  an  extra-hazardous  polish  ("policy" — joke,  but  not 
above  mediocrity,)  on  his  boots,  and  wished  to  protect  them, 
but  I  examined  and  could  not  see  that  they  were  blacked  any 
better  than  usual.  It  may  have  been  that  he  had  forgotten  his 
carpet,  before,  but  he  did  not  have  it  with  him,  anyhow.  He 
was  an  exceedingly  pleasant  old  gentleman  ;'  we  all  liked  him, 
especially  Blucher.  When  he  went  away,  Blucher  invited  him 
to  come  again  and  fetch  his  carpet  along. 

Prince  Dolgorouki  and  a  Grand  Admiral  or  two,  whom  we 
had  seen  yesterday  at  the  reception,  came  on  board  also.  I 
was  a  little  distant  with  these  parties,  at  first,  because  when  I 
have  been  visiting  Emperors  I  do  not  like  to  be  too  familiar 
with  people  I  only  know  by  reputation,  and  whose  moral  char 
acters  and  standing  in  society  I  can  not  be  thoroughly  ac 
quainted  with.  I  judged  it  best  to  be  a  little  offish,  at  first. 
I  said  to  myself,  Princes  and  Counts  and  Grand  Admirals  are 
very  well,  but  they  are  not  Emperors,  and  one  can  not  be  too 
particular  about  who  he  associates  with. 

Baron  Wrangel  came,  also.  He  used  to  be  Russian  Ambas 
sador  at  Washington.  I  told  him  I  had  an  uncle  who  fell 
down  a  shaft  and  broke  himself  in  two,  as  much  as  a  year  be 
fore  that.  That  was  a  falsehood,  but  then  I  was  not  going  to 
let  any  man  eclipse  me  on  surprising  adventures,  merely  for 
the  want  of  a  little  invention.  The  Baron  is  a  fine  man,  and 
is  said  to  stand  high  in  the  Emperor's  confidence  and  esteem. 

Baron  Ungern-Sternberg,  a  boisterous,  whole-souled  old  no 
bleman,  came  with  the  rest.  He  is  a  man  of  progress  and 
enterprise — a  representative  man  of  the  age.  He  is  the  Chief 
Director  of  the  railway  system  of  Russia — a  sort  of  railroad 
king.  In  his  line  he  is  making  things  move  along  in  this  coun 
try.  He  has  traveled  extensively  in  America.  He  says  he  has 
tried  convict  labor  on  his  railroads,  and  with  perfect  success. 
He  says  the  convicts  work  well,  and  are  quiet  and  peaceable. 
He  observed  that  he  employs  nearly  ten  thousand  of  them  now. 

26 


402  ARISTOCRATIC     VISITORS. 

This  appeared  to  be  another  call  on  my  resources.  I  wa£  equal 
to  the  emergency.  I  said  we  had  eighty  thousand  convicts 
employed  on  the  railways  in  America — all  of  them  under  sen 
tence  of  death  for  murder  in  the  first  degree.  That  closed 
him  out. 

We  had  General  Todtleben  (the  famous  defender  of  Sebas- 
topol,  during  the  siege,)  and  many  inferior  army  and  also  navy 
officers,  and  a  number  of  unofficial  Russian  ladies  and  gentle 
men.  Naturally;  a  champagne  luncheon  was  in  order,  and 
was  accomplished  without  loss  of  life.  Toasts  and  jokes  were 
discharged  freely,  but  no  speeches  were  made  save  one  thank 
ing  the  Emperor  and  the  Grand  Duke,  through  the  Governor- 
General,  for  our  hospitable  reception,  and  one  by  the  Gov 
ernor-General  in  reply,  in  which  he  returned  the  Emperor's 
thanks  for  the  speech,  etc.,  etc. 


CHAPTEE  XXXYIII. 

"YTT^E   returned  to  Constantinople,  and  after  a  day  or  two 

*  *  spent  in  exhausting  marches  about  the  city  and  voyages 
up  the  Golden  Horn  in  caiques,  we  steamed  away  again.  We 
passed  through  the  Sea  of  Marmora  and  the  Dardanelles,  and 
steered  for  a  new  land — a  new  one  to  us,  at  least — Asia.  We 
had  as  yet  only  acquired  a  bowing  acquaintance  with  it, 
through  pleasure  excursions  to  Scutari  and  the  regions  round 
about. 

We  passed  between  Lemnos  and  Mytilene,  and  saw  them  as 
we  had  seen  Elba  and  the  Balearic  Isles — mere  bulky  shapes, 
with  the  softening  mists  of  distance  upon  them — whales  in  a 
fog,  as  it  wrere.  Then  we  held  our  course  southward,  and 
began  to  "  read  up  "  celebrated  Smyrna. 

At  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night  the  sailors  in  the  forecastle 
amused  themselves  and  aggravated  us  by  burlesquing  our  visit 
to  royalty.  The  opening  paragraph  of  our  Address  to  the 
Emperor  was  framed  as  follows : 

"  We  are  a  handful  of  private  citizens  of  America,  traveling 
simply  for  recreation — and  unostentatiously,  as  becomes  our 
unofficial  state — and,  therefore,  we  have  no  excuse  to 
tender  for  presenting  ourselves  before  your  Majesty,  save 
the  desire  of  offering  our  grateful  acknowledgments  to  the 
lord  of  a  realm,  which,  through  good  and  through  evil 
report,  has  been  the  steadfast  friend  of  the  land  we  love  so 
well." 

The  third  cook,  crowned  with  a  resplendent  tin  basin  and 


404 


SAILOR     BURLESQUES. 


wrapped  royally  in  a  table-cloth  mottled  with  grease-spots  and 
coffee  stains,  and  bearing  a  sceptre  that  looked  strangely  like  a 
belaying-pin,  walked  upon  a  dilapidated  carpet  and  perched 
himself  on  the  capstan,  careless  of  the  flying  spray ;  his  tarred 
and  weather-beaten  Chamberlains,  Dukes  and  Lord  High  Ad 
mirals  surrounded  him,  arrayed  in  all  the  pomp  that  spare 
tarpaulins  and  remnants  of  old  sails  could  furnish.  Then  the 
visiting  "  watch  below,"  transformed  into  graceless  ladies  and 

uncouth  pilgrims,  by 
rude  travesties  upon 
waterfalls,  hoopskirts, 
white  kid  gloves  and 
swallow-tail  coats,  mov 
ed  solemnly  up  the 


companion      way, 


and 


bowing  low,  began  a 
system  of  complicated 
and  extraordinary  smil 
ing  which  few  monarchs 
could  look  upon  and 
live.  Then  the  mock 
consul,  a  slush-plastered 
deck-sweep,  drew  out  a 
soiled  fragment  of  paper 
and  proceeded  to  read, 
laboriously 

"  To     His     Imperial 
Majesty,  Alexander  II., 
Emperor  of  Russia : 
"  We  are  a  handful  of  private  citizens  of  America,  traveling 
simply  for  recreation, — and  unostentatiously,  as  becomes  our 
unofficial  state — and  therefore,  we  have  no  excuse  to  tender  for 
presenting  ourselves  before  your  Majesty — " 

Tlie  Emperor — "  Then  what  the  devil  did  you  come  for  ?" 
— "  Save  the  desire  of  offering  our  grateful  acknowledgments 
to  the  lord  of  a  realm  which — " 

The  Emperor — "  Oh,    d — n   the   Address  ! — read   it   to   the 


SHIP    EMPEROR. 


SAILOR     BURLESQUES. 


405 


police.  Chamberlain,  take  these  people  over  to  my  brother, 
the  Grand  Duke's,  and  give  them  a  square  meal.  Adieu !  I 
am  happy — I  am  gratified — I  am  delighted — I  am  bored. 
Adieu,  adieu — vamos  the  ranch !  The  First  Groom  of  the 
Palace  will  proceed  to  count  the  portable  articles  of  value 
belonging  to  the  premises." 

The  farce  then   closed,  to  be  repeated   again  with  every 


THE   RECEPTION. 


change  of  the  watches,  and  embellished  with  new  and  still  more 
extravagant  inventions  of  pomp  and  conversation. 

At  all  times  of  the  day  and  night  the  phraseology  of  that 
tiresome  address  fell  upon  our  ears.  Grimy  sailors  came  down 
out  of  the  foretop  placidly  announcing  themselves  as  "  a  hand 
ful  of  private  citizens  of  America,  traveling  simply  for  recreation 
and  unostentatiously,"  etc. ;  the  coal  passers  moved  to  their 
duties  in  the  profound  depths  of  the  ship,  explaining  the 
blackness  of  their  faces  and  their  uncouthness  of  dress,  with 
the  reminder  that  they  were  "  a  handful  of  private  citizens, 
traveling  simply  for  recreation,"  etc.,  and  when  the  cry  rang 
through  the  vessel  at  midnight :  "  EIGHT  BELLS  ! — LARBOARD 
WATCH,  TURN  OUT!"  the  larboard  watch  came  gaping  and 
stretching  out  of  their  den,  with  the  everlasting  formula :  "  Aye- 


406  SMYRNA. 

aye,  sir!  "We  are  a  handful  of  private  citizens  of  America, 
traveling  simply  for  recreation,  and  unostentatiously,  as  be 
comes  our  unofficial  state !" 

As  I  was  a  member  of  the  committee,  and  helped  to  frame 
the  Address,  these  sarcasms  came  home  to  me.  I  never  heard 
a  sailor  proclaiming  himself  as  a  handful  of  American  citizens 
traveling  for  recreation,  but  I  wished  he  might  trip  and  fall 
overboard,  and  so  reduce  his  handful  by  one  individual,  at 
least.  I  never  was  so  tired  of  any  one  phrase  as  the  sailors 
made  me  of  the  opening  sentence  of  the  Address  to  the  Em 
peror  of  Russia. 

This  seaport  of  Smyrna,  our  first  notable  acquaintance  in 
Asia,  is  a  closely  packed  city  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  thou 
sand  inhabitants,  and,  like  Constantinople,  it  has  no  outskirts. 
It  is  as  closely  packed  at  its  outer  edges  as  it  is  in  the  centre, 
and  then  the  habitations  leave  suddenly  off  and  the  plain  be 
yond  seems  houseless.  It  is  just  like  any  other  Oriental  city. 
That  is  to  say,  its  Moslem  houses  are  heavy  and  dark,  and  as 
comfortless  as  so  many  tombs  ;  its  streets  are  crooked,  rudely 
and  roughly  paved,  and  as  narrow  as  an  ordinary  staircase ; 
the  streets  uniformly  carry  a  man  to  any  other  place  than  the 
one  he  wants  to  go  to,  and  surprise  him  by  landing  him  in  the 
most  unexpected  localities ;  business  is  chiefly  carried  on  in 
great  covered  bazaars,  celled  like  a  honeycomb  with  innumer 
able  shops  no  larger  than  a  common  closet,  and  the  whole  hive 
cut  up  into  a  maze  of  alleys  about  wide  enough  to  accommo 
date  a  laden  camel,  and  well  calculated  to  confuse  a  stranger 
and  eventually  lose  him  ;  every  where  there  is  dirt,  every  where 
there  are  fleas,  every  where  there  are  lean,  broken-hearted 
dogs  ;  every  alley  is  thronged  with  people ;  wherever  you  look, 
your  eye  rests  upon  a  wild  masquerade  of  extravagant  cos 
tumes  ;  the  workshops  are  all  open  to  the  streets,  and  the 
workmen  visible  ;  all  manner  of  sounds  assail  the  ear,  and  over 
them  all  rings  out  the  muezzin's  cry  from  some  tall  minaret, 
calling  the  faithful  vagabonds  to  prayer ;  and  superior  to  the 
call  to  prayer,  the  noises  in  the  streets,  the  interest  of  the  cos 
tumes — superior  to  every  thing,  and  claiming  the  bulk  of  at- 


MORE    "ORIENTAL    SPLENDOR."  407 

tention  first,  last,  and  all  the  time — is  a  combination  of  Moham 
medan  stenches,  to  which  the  smell  of  even  a  Chinese  quarter 
would  be  as  pleasant  as  the  roasting  odors  of  the  fatted  calf  to 
the  nostrils  of  the  returning  Prodigal.  Such  is  Oriental  lux 
ury — such  is  Oriental  splendor !  We  read  about  it  all  our 
days,  but  we  comprehend  it  not  until  we  see  it.  Smyrna  is  a 
very  old  city.  Its  name  occurs  several  times  in  the  Bible,  one 
or  two  of  the  discipl :  *  of  Christ  visited  it,  and  here  was  located 
one  of  the  original  seven  apocalyptic  churches  spoken  of  in 
Revelations.  These  churches  were  symbolized  in  the  Scrip 
tures  as  candlesticks,  and  on  certain  conditions  there  was  a 
sort  of  implied  promise  that  Smyrna  should  be  endowed 
with  a  "  crown  of  life."  She  was  to  "be  faithful  unto  death" 
— those  were  the  terms.  She  has  not  kept  up  her  faith 
straight  along,  but  the  pilgrims  that  wrander  hither  con 
sider  that  she  has  come  near  enough  to  it  to  save  her,  and  so 
they  point  to  the  fact  that  Smyrna  to-day  wrears  her  crown  of 
life,  and  is  a  great  city,  with  a  great  commerce  and  full  of  en 
ergy,  while  the  cities  wherein  were  located  the  other  six 
churches,  and  to  which  no  crown  of  life  was  promised,  have 
vanished  from  the  earth.  So  Smyrna  really  still  possesses  her 
crown  of  life,  in  a  business  point  of  view.  Her  career,  for 
eighteen  centuries,  has  been  a  chequered  one,  and  she  has  been 
under  the  rule  of  princes  of  many  creeds,  yet  there  has  been 
no  season  during  all  that  time,  as  far  as  we  know,  (and  during 
such  seasons  as  she  was  inhabited  at  all,)  that  she  has  been  with 
out  her  little  community  of  Christians  "  faithful  unto  death." 
Hers  was  the  only  church  against  which  no  threats  were  im 
plied  in  the  Revelations,  and  the  only  one  which  survived. 

With  Ephesus,  forty  miles  from  here,  where  was  located  an 
other  of  the  seven  churches,  the  case  was  different.  The  "  can-k 
dlestick  "  has  been  removed  from  Ephesus.  Her  light  has  been 
put  out.  Pilgrims,  always  prone  to  find  prophecies  in  the 
Bible,  and  often  where  none  exist,  speak  cheerfully  and  compla 
cently  of  poor,  ruined  Ephesus  as  the  victim  of  prophecy. 
And  yet  there  is  no  sentence  that  promises,  without  due  qualir 
fication,  the  destruction  of  the  city.  The  words  are  : 


408  PILGRIM     PROPHECY-SAVANS. 

"  Remember,  therefore,  from  whence  thou  art  fallen,  and  repent,  and  do  the  first 
works ;  or  else  I  will  come  unto  thee  quickly,  and  will  remove  thy  candlestick  out 
of  his  place,  except  thou  repent." 

That  is  all ;  the  other  verses  are  singularly  complimentary  to 
Ephesus.  The  threat  is  qualified.  There  is  no  history  to  show 
that  she  did  not  repent.  But  the  cruelest  habit  the  modern 
prophecy-savans  have,  is  that  one  of  coolly  and  arbitrarily  fit 
ting  the  prophetic  shirt  on  to  the  wro^g  man.  They  do  it 
without  regard  to  rhyme  or  reason.  Both  the  cases  I  have 
just  mentioned  are  instances  in  point.  Those  "  prophecies  " 
are  distinctly  leveled  at  the  "churches  of  Ephesus,  Smyrna," 
etc.,  and  yet  the  pilgrims  invariably  make  them  refer  to  the 
cities  instead.  Xo  crown  of  life  is  promised  to  the  town  of 
Smyrna  and  its  commerce,  but  to  the  handful  of  Christians 
who  formed  its  "  church."  If  they  were  "faithful  unto  death," 
they  have  their  crown  now — but  no  amount  of  faithfulness  and 
legal  shrewdness  combined  could  legitimately  drag  the  city  into 
a  participation  in  the  promises  of  the  prophecy.  The  stately 
language  of  the  Bible  refers  to  a  crown  of  life  whose  lustre 
will  reflect  the  day-beams  of  the  endless  ages  of  eternity,  not 
the  butterfly  existence  of  a  city  built  by  men's  hands,  which 
must  pass  to  dust  with  the  builders  and  be  forgotten  even  in 
the  mere  handful  of  centuries  vouchsafed  to  the  solid  world 
itself  between  its  cradle  and  its  grave. 

The  fashion  of  delving  out  fulfillments  of  prophecy  where 
that  prophecy  consists  of  mere  "ifs,"  trenches  upon  the  absurd. 
Suppose,  a  thousand  years  from  now,  a  malarious  swamp 
builds  itself  up  in  the  shallow  harbor  of  Smyrna,  or  something 
else  kills  the  town  ;  and  suppose,  also,  that  within  that  time 
the  swamp  that  has  filled  the  renowned  harbor  of  ^Ephesus  and 
rendered  her  ancient  site  deadly  and  uninhabitable  to-day,  be 
comes  hard  and  healthy  ground ;  suppose  the  natural  conse 
quence  ensues,  to  wit :  that  Smyrna  becomes  a  melancholy 
ruin,  and  Ephesus  is  rebuilt.  What  would  the  prophecy-savans 
say  \  They  would  coolly  skip  over  our  age  of  the  world,  and 
say :  "  Smyrna  was  not  faithful  unto  death,  and  so  her  crown 
of  life  was  denied  her  ;  Ephesus  repented,  and  lo  !  her  candle- 


PILGRIM     PROPIIECY-SAVANS.  409 

stick  was  not  removed.  Behold  these  evidences  !  How  won 
derful  is  prophecy !"  i 

Smyrna  has  been  utterly  destroyed  six  times.  If  her  crown 
of  life  had  been  an  insurance  policy,  she  would  have  had  an 
opportunity  to  collect  on  it  the  first  time  she  fell.  But  she 
holds  it  on  sufferance  and  by  a  complimentary  construction  of 
language  which  does  not  refer  to  her.  Six  different  times, 
however,  I  suppose  some  infatuated  prophecy-enthusiast  blun 
dered  along  and  said,  to  the  infinite  disgust  of  Smyrna  and  the 
Smyrniotes :  "  In  sooth,  here  is  astounding  fulfillment  of 
prophecy !  Smyrna  hath  not  been  faithful  unto  death,  and  be 
hold  her  crown  of  life  is  vanished  from  her  head.  Verily, 
these  things  be  astonishing !" 

Such  things  have  a  bad  influence.  They  provoke  worldly 
men  into  using  light  conversation  concerning  sacred  subjects. 
Thick-headed  commentators  upon  the  Bible,  and  stupid 
preachers  and  teachers,  work  more  damage  to  religion  than 
sensible,  cool-brained  clergymen  can  fight  away  again,  toil  as 
they  may.  It  is  not  good  judgment  to  fit  a  crown  of  life  upon 
a  city  which  has  been  destroyed  six  times.  That  other  class 
of  wiseacres  who  twist  prophecy  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make 
it  promise  the  destruction  and  desolation  of  the  same  city,  use 
judgment  just  as  bad,  since  the  city  is  in  a  very  flourishing 
condition  now,  unhappily  for  them.  These  things  put  argu 
ments  into  the  mouth  of  infidelity. 

A  portion  of  the  city  is  pretty  exclusively  Turkish  ;  the 
Jews  have  a  quarter  to  themselves  ;  the  Franks  another  quar 
ter  ;  so,  also,  with  the  Armenians.  The  Armenians,  of  course, 
are  Christians.  Their  houses  are  large,  clean,  airy,  hand 
somely  paved  with  black  and  white  squares  of  marble,  and  in 
the  centre  of  many  of  them  is  a  square  court,  which  has  in  it 
a  luxuriant  flower-garden  and  a  sparkling  fountain ;  the  doors 
of  all  the  rooms  open  on  this.  A  very  wide  hall  leads  to  the 
street  door,  and  in  this  the  women  sit,  the  most  of  the  day.  In 
the  cool  of  the  evening  they  dress  up  in  their  best  raiment  and 
show  themselves  at  the  door.  They  are  all  comely  of  counte 
nance,  and  exceedingly  neat  and  cleanly ;  they  look  as  if  they 


410  SOCIABLE     ARMENIAN     GIRLS. 

were  just  out  of  a  band-box.  Some  of  the  young  ladies — many 
of  them,  I  may  say — are  even  very  beautiful ;  they  average  a 
shade  better  than  American  girls — which  treasonable  words  I 
pray  may  be  forgiven  me.  They  are  very  sociable,  and  will 
smile  back  when  a  stranger  smiles  at  them,  bow  back  when  he 
bows,  and  talk  back  if  he  speaks  to  them.  No  introduction  is 
required.  An  hour's  chat  at  the  door  with  a  pretty  girl  one 
never  saw  before,  is  easily  obtained,  and  is  very  pleasant.  I 
have  tried  it.  I  could  not  talk  any  thing  but  English,  and  the 
girl  knew  nothing  but  Greek,  or  Armenian,  or  some  such  bar 
barous  tongue,  but  we  got  along  very  well.  I  find  that  in 
cases  like  these,  the  fact  that  you  can  not  comprehend  each 
other  isn't  much  of  a  drawback.  In  that  Russian  town  of 
Yalta  I  danced  an  astonishing  sort  of  dance  an  hour  long,  and 
one  I  had  not  heard  of  before,  with  a  very  pretty  girl,  and  we 
talked  incessantly,  and  laughed  exhaustingly,  and  neither  one 
ever  knew  what  the  other  was  driving  at.  But  it  was  splendid. 
There  were  twenty  people  in  the  set,  and  the  dance  was  very 
lively  and  complicated.  It  was  complicated  enough  without 
me — with  me  it  was  more  so.  I  threw  in  a  figure  now  and 
then  that  surprised  those  Russians.  But  I  have  never  ceased 
to  think  of  that  girl.  I  have  written  to  her,  but  I  can  not 
direct  the  epistle  because  her  name  is  one  of  those  nine-jointed 
Russian  affairs,  and  there  are  not  letters  enough  in  our  alpha 
bet  to  hold  out.  I  am  not  reckless  enough  to  try  to  pronounce 
it  when  I  am  awake,  but  I  make  a  stagger  at  it  in  my  dreams, 
and  get  up  with  QIQ  lockjaw  in  the  morning.  I  am  fading.  I 
do  not  take  my  meals  now,  with  any  sort  of  regularity.  Her 
dear  name  haunts  me  still  in  my  dreams.  It  is  awful  on  teeth. 
It  never  comes  out  of  my  mouth  but  it  fetches  an  old  snag 
along  with  it.  And  then  the  lockjaw  closes  down  and  nips  off 
a  couple  of  the  last  syllables — but  they  taste  good. 

Coining  through  the  Dardanelles,  we  saw  camel  trains  on 
shore  with  the  glasses,  but  we  were  never  close  to  one  till  we 
got  to  Smyrna.  These  camels  are  very  much  larger  than  the 
scrawny  specimens  one  sees  in  the  menagerie.  They  stride 
along  these  streets,  in  single  file,  a  dozen  in  a  train,  with 


STREET    SCENES. 


411 


heavy  loads  on  their  backs,  and  a  fancy-looking  negro  in  Turk 
ish  costume,  or  an  Arab,  preceding  them  on  a  little  donkey 
and  completely  overshadowed  and  rendered  insignificant  by 
the  huge  beasts.  To  see  a  camel  train  laden  with  the  spices 
of  Arabia 
and  the  rare 
fabrics  of 
Persia  come 
marching 
through  the 
narrow  al 
leys  of  the 
bazaar, 
among  por 
ters  with 
their  bur 
dens,  money 
changers, 
lamp-  mer 
chants,  Al- 
naschars  in 
the  glass 
ware  busi 
ness,  portly 
c  ross-legged 
Turks  smok 
ing  the  fa 
mous  nar- 
ghili,  and 

the  crowds  drifting  to  and  fro  in  the  fanciful  costumes  of  the 
East,  is  a  genuine  revelation  of  the  Orient.  The  picture  lacks 
nothing.  It  casts  you  back  at  once  into  your  forgotten  boy 
hood,  and  again  you  dream  over  the  wonders  of  the  Arabian 
Nights ;  again  your  companions  are  princes,  your  lord  is  the 
Caliph  Haroun  Al  Haschid,  and  your  servants  are  terrific 
giants  and  genii  that  come  with  smoke  and  lightning  and 
thunder,  and  go  as  a  storm  goes  when  they  depart ! 


STREET    SCEXE    IN    SMYilXA. 


CHAPTEE  XXXIX. 


~\TTE  inquired,  and  learned  that  the  lions  of  Smyrna  con- 

*  V  sisted  of  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  citadel,  whose  broken 
and  prodigious  battlements  frown  upon  the  city  from  a  lofty 
hill  just  in  the  edge  of  the  town — the  Mount  Pagus  of 
Scripture,  they  call  it ;  the  site  of  that  one  of  the  Seven 
Apocalyptic  Churches  of  Asia  which  was  located  here  in 
the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era ;  and  the  grave  and 
the  place  of  martyrdom  of  the  venerable  Polycarp,  who 
suffered  in  Smyrna  for  his  religion  some  eighteen  hundred 
years  ago. 

We  took  little  donkeys  and  started.  We  saw  Polycarp's 
tomb,  and  then  hurried  on. 

The  "  Seven  Churches  " — thus  they  abbreviate  it — came 
next  on  the  list.  We  rode  there1 — about  a  mile  and  a  half  in 
the  sweltering  sun — and  visited  a  little  Greek  church  which 
they  said  was  built  upon  the  ancient  site ;  and  we  paid  a  small 
fee,  and  the  holy  attendant  gave  each  of  us  a  little  wax  candle 
as  a  remembrancer  of  the  place,  and  I  put  mine  in  my  hat 
and  the  sun  melted  it  and  the  grease  all  ran  down  the  back  of 
my  neck ;  and  so  now  I  have  not  any  thing  left  but  the  wick, 
and  it  is  a  sorry  and  a  wTilted-looking  wrick  at  that. 

Several  of  us  argued  as  well  as  we  could  that  the  "  church" 
mentioned  in  the  Bible  meant  a  party  of  Christians,  and  not  a 
building ;  that  the  Bible  spoke  of  them  as  being  very  poor — 
so  poor,  I  thought,  and  so  subject  to  persecution  (as  per  Poly- 
carp's  martyrdom)  that  in  the  first  place  they  probably  could 


THE 


SEVEN     CHURCHES/ 


413 


not  have  afforded  a  church  edifice,  and  in  the  second  would 
not  have  dared  to  build  it  in  the  open  light  of  day  if  they 
could  ;  and  finally,  that  if  they  had  had  the  privilege  of  build 
ing  it,  common  judgment  would  have  suggested  that  they 
build  it  somewhere  near  the  town.  But  the  elders  of  the 
ship's  family  ruled  us  down  and  scouted  our  evidences.  How 
ever,  retribution  came  to  them  afterward.  They  found  that 
they  had  been  led  astray  and  had  gone  to  the  wrong  place  ;  they 
discovered  that  the  accepted  site  is  in  the  city. 


SMYRNA. 


Riding  through  the  town,  we  could  see  marks  of  the  six 
Smyrnas  that  have  existed  here  and  been  burned  up  by  fire  or 
knocked  down  by  earthquakes.  The  hills  and  the  rocks  are 
rent  asunder  in  places,  excavations  expose  great  blocks  of 
building-stone  that  have  lain  buried  for  ages,  and  all  the  mean 
houses  and  walls  of  modern  Smyrna  along  the  way  are  spotted 
white  with  broken  pillars,  capitals  and  fragments  of  sculptured 
marble  that  once  adorned  the  lordly  palaces  that  were  the 
glory  of  the  city  in  the  olden  time. 


414  MYSTERIOUS     OYSTER     MINE. 

The  ascent  of  the  hill  of  the  citadel  is  very  steep,  and  we 
proceeded  rather  slowly.  But  there  were  matters  of  interest 
about  us.  In  one  place,  five  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  the 
perpendicular  bank  on  the  upper  side  of  the  road  was  ten  or 
fifteen  feet  high,  and  the  cut  exposed  three  veins  of  oyster 
shells,  just  as  we  have  seen  quartz  veins  exposed  in  the  cutting 
of  a  road  in  Nevada  or  Montana.  The  veins  were  about 
eighteen  inches  thick  and  two  or  three  feet  apart,  and  they 
slanted  along  downward  for  a  distance  of  thirty  feet  or  more,  and 
then  disappeared  where  the  cut  joined  the  road.  Heaven  only 
knows  how  far  a  man  might  trace  them  by  "  stripping."  They 
were  clean,  nice  oyster  shells,  large,  and  just  like  any  other 
oyster  shells.  They  were  thickly  massed  together,  and  none 
were  scattered  above  or  below  the  veins.  Each  one  was  a 
well-defined  lead  by  itself,  and  without  a  spur.  My  first  in 
stinct  was  to  set  up  the  usual — 

NOTICE: 

"  "We,  the  undersigned,  claim  five  claims  of  two  hundred  feet  each,  (and  one  for 
discovery,)  on  this  ledge  or  lode  of  oyster- shells,  with  all  its  dips,  spurs,  angles,  va 
riations  and  sinuosities,  and  fifty  feet  on  each  side  of  the  same,  to  work  it,  etc.,  etc., 
according  to  the  mining  laws  of  Smyrna." 

They  were  such  perfectly  natural-looking  leads  that  I  could 
hardly  keep  from  "  taking  them  up."  Among  the  oyster-shells 
were  mixed  many  fragments  of  ancient,  broken  crockery  ware. 
Now  how  did  those  masses  of  oyster-shells  get  there  ?  I  can 
not  determine.  Broken  crockery  and  oyster-shells  are  suggest 
ive  of  restaurants — but  then  they  could  have  had  no  such 
places  away  up  there  on  that  mountain  side  in  our  time,  be 
cause  nobody  has  lived  up  there.  A  restaurant  would  not  pay 
in  such  a  stony,  forbidding,  desolate  place.  And  besides,  there 
were  no  champagne  corks  among  the  shells.  If  there  ever  was 
a  restaurant  there,  it  must  have  been  in  Smyrna's  palmy  days, 
when  the  hills  were  covered  with  palaces.  I  could  believe  in 
one  restaurant,  on  those  terms  ;  but  then  how  about  the  three  ? 
Did  they  have  restaurants  there  at  three  different  periods  of 
the  world  ? — because  there  are  two  or  three  feet  of  solid  earth 


MYSTERIOUS     OYSTER     MINE.  415 

between  the  oyster  leads.  Evidently,  the  restaurant  solution 
will  not  answer. 

The  hill  might  have  been  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  once,  and 
been  lifted  up,  with  its  oyster-beds,  by  an  earthquake — but, 
then,  how  about  the  crockery  ?  And  moreover,  how  about 
three  oyster  beds,  one  above  another,  and  thick  strata  of  good 
honest  earth  between  ? 

That  theory  will  not  do.  It  is  just  possible  that  this  hill  is 
Mount  Ararat,  and  that  Noah's  Ark  rested  here,  and  he  ate 
oysters  and  threw  the  shells  overboard.  But  that  will  not  do, 
either.  There  are  the  three  layers  again  and  the  solid  earth 
between — and,  besides,  there  were  only  eight  in  Noah's  family, 
and  they  could  not  have  eaten  all  these  oysters  in  the  two  or 
three  months  they  staid  on  top  of  that  mountain.  The 
beasts — however,  it  is  simply  absurd  to  suppose  he  did  not 
know  any  more  than  to  feed  the  beasts  on  oyster  suppers. 

It  is  painful — it  is  even  humiliating — but  I  am  reduced 
at  last  to  one  slender  theory  :  that  the  oysters  climbed  up  there 
of  their  own  accord.  But  what  object  could  they  have  had  in 
view  ? — what  did  they  want  up  there  ?  What  could  any  oys 
ter  want  to  climb  a  hill  for  ?  To  climb  a  hill  must  necessarily 
be  fatiguing  and  annoying  exercise  for  an  oyster.  The  most 
natural  conclusion  would  be  that  the  oysters  climbed  up  there 
to  look  at  the  scenery.  Yet  when  one  comes  to  reflect  upon 
the  nature  of  an  oyster,  it  seems  plain  that  he  does  not  care 
for  scenery.  An  oyster  has  no  taste  for  such  things  ;  he  cares 
nothing  for  the  beautiful.  An  oyster  is  of  a  retiring  disposi 
tion,  and  not  lively — not  even  cheerful  above  the  average,  and 
never  enterprising.  But  above  all,  an  oyster  does  not  take  any 
interest  in  scenery — he  scorns  it.  What  have  I  arrived  at 
now  ?  Simply  at  the  point  I  started  from,  namely,  those  oyster 
shells  are  there,  in  regular  layers,  live  hundred  feet  above  the 
sea,  and  no  man  knows  how  they  got  there.  I  have  hunted 
up  the  guide-books,  and  the  gist  of  what  they  say  is  this : 
"  They  are  there,  but  how  they  got  there  is  a  mystery." 

Twenty-five  years  ago,  a  multitude  of  people  in  America 
put  on  their  ascension  robes,  took  a  tearful  leave  of  their 


416 


A     TEMPORARY     TRIUMPH. 


friends,  and  made  ready  to  fly  up  into  heaven  at  the  first  blast 
of  the  trumpet,  But  the  angel  did  not  blow  it.  Miller's  res 
urrection  day  was  a  failure.  The  Millerites  were  disgusted. 
I  did  not  suspect  that  there  were  Millers  in  Asia  Minor,  but  a 
gentleman  tells  me  that  they  had  it  all  set  for  the  world  to 
come  to  an  end  in  Smyrna  one  day  about  three  years  ago. 
There  was  much  buzzing  and  preparation  for  a  long  time  pre 


viously,  and  it  culminated 
in  a  wild  excitement  at  the 
appointed  time.  A  vast 
number  of  the  populace  as 
cended  the  citadel  hill  early  AX  APPAREXT  SUCCESS. 
in  the  morning,  to  get  out 

of  the  way  of  the  general  destruction,  and  many  of  the  infatu 
ated  closed  up  their  shops  and  retired  from  all  earthly  busi 
ness.  But  the  strange  part  of  it  was  that  about  three  in  the 
afternoon,  while  this  gentleman  and  his  friends  were  at  dinner 
in  the  hotel,  a  terrific  storm  of  rain,  accompanied  by  thunder  and 
lightning,  broke  forth  and  continued  with  dire  fury  for  two  or 
three  hours.  It  was  a  thing  unprecedented  in  Smyrna  at  that 
time  of  the  year,  and  scared  some  of  the  most  skeptical.  The 


CURIOUS     PLACE     FOR     A     RAILROAD.  417 

streets  ran  rivers  and  the  hotel  floor  was  flooded  with  water. 
The  dinner  had  to  be  suspended.  When  the  storm  finished 
and  left  every  body  drenched  through  and  through,  and  mel 
ancholy  and  half-drowned,  the  ascensionists  came  down  from 
the  mountain  as  dry  as  so  many  charity-sermons !  They  had 
been  looking  down  upon  the  fearful  storm  going  on  below, 
and  really  believed  that  their  proposed  destruction  of  the  world 
was  proving  a  grand  success. 

A  railway  here  in  Asia — in  the  dreamy  realm  of  the  Ori 
ent — in  the  fabled  land  of  the  Arabian  Night* — is  a  strange 
thing  to  think  of.  And  yet  they  have  one  already,  and  are 
building  another.  The  present  one  is  well  built  and  well  con 
ducted,  by  an  English  Company,  but  is  not  doing  an  immense 
amount  of  business.  The  first  year  it  carried  a  good  many 
passengers,  but  its  freight  list  only  comprised  eight  hundred 
pounds  of  figs ! 

It  runs  almost  to  the  very  gates  of  Ephesus — a  town  great  in 
all  ages  of  the  world — a  city  familiar  to  readers  of  the  Bible, 
and  one  which  was  as  old  as  the  very  hills  when  the  disciples 
of  Christ  preached  in  its  streets.  It  dates  back  to  the  shadowy 
ages  of  tradition,  and  was  the  birthplace  of  gods  renowned  in 
Grecian  mythology.  The  idea  of  a  locomotive  tearing  through 
such  a  place  as  this,  and  waking  the  phantoms  of  its  old  days 
of  romance  out  of  their  dreams  of  dead  and  gone  centuries,  is 
curious  enough. 

We  journey  thither  to-inorrow  to  see  the  celebrated  ruins. 

27 


OHAPTEE   XL. 


has  been  a  stirring  day.  The  Superintendent  of  the 
railway  put  a  train  at  our  disposal,  and  did  us  the  fur 
ther  kindness  of  accompanying  us  to  Ephesus  and  giving  to  us 
his  watchful  care.  We  brought  sixty  scarcely  perceptible  don 
keys  in  the  freight  cars,  for  we  had  much  ground  to  go  over. 
We  have  seen  some  of  the  most  grotesque  costumes,  along  the 
line  of  the  railroad,  that  can  be  imagined.  I  am  glad  that  no 
possible  combination  of  words  could  describe  them,  for  I  might 
then  be  foolish  enough  to  attempt  it. 

At  ancient  Ayassalook,  in  the  midst  of  a  forbidding  desert, 
we  came  upon  long  lines  of  ruined  aqueducts,  and  other  rem 
nants  of  architectural  grandeur,  that  told  us  plainly  enough 
we  were  nearing  what  had  been  a  metropolis,  once.  We  left 
the  train  and  mounted  the  donkeys,  along  with  our  invited 
guests — pleasant  young  gentlemen  from  the  officers'  list  of  an 
American  man-of-war. 

The  little  donkeys  had  saddles  upon  them  which  were  made 
very  high  in  order  that  the  rider's  feet  might  not  drag  the 
ground.  The  preventative  did  not  work  well  in  the  cases  of 
our  tallest  pilgrims,  however.  There  wrere  no  bridles — noth 
ing  but  a  single  rope,  tied  to  the  bit.  It  was  purely  orna 
mental,  for  the  donkey  cared  nothing  for  it.  If  he  were  drift 
ing  to  starboard,  you  might  put  your  helm  down  hard  the 
other  way,  if  it  were  any  satisfaction  to  you  to  do  it,  but  he 
would  continue  to  drift  to  starboard  all  the  same.  There  was 
only  one  process  which  could  be  depended  on,  and  that  was  to 


THE     VILLAINOUS    DONKEYS. 


419 


get  down  and  lift  his  rear  around  until  his  head  pointed  in  the 
right  direction,  or  take  him  under  your  arm  and  carry  him  to 
a  part  of  the  road  which  he  could  not  get  out  of  without 
climbing.  The  sun  flamed  down  as  hot  as  a  furnace,  and  neck- 
scarfs,  veils  and  umbrellas  seemed  hardly  any  protection ; 
they  served  only  to  make  the  long  procession  look  more  than 
ever  fantastic — for  be  it  known  the  ladies  were  all  riding 
astride  because  they  could  not  stay  on  the  shapeless  saddles 


DRIFTING   TO    STARBOARD. 


sidewise,  the  men  were  perspiring  ,and  out  of  temper,  their 
feet  were  banging  against  the  rocks,  the  donkeys  were  caper 
ing  in  every  direction  but  the  right  one  and  being  belabored 
with  clubs  for  it,  and  every  now  and  then  a  broad  umbrella 
would  suddenly  go  down  out  of  the  cavalcade,  announcing  to 
all  that  one  more  pilgrim  had  bitten  the  dust.  It  was  a  wilder 
picture  than  those  solitudes  had  seen  for  many  a  day.  No 
donkeys  ever  existed  that  were  as  hard  to  navigate  as  these,  I 
think,  or  that  had  so  many  vile,  exasperating  instincts.  Occa- 


420 


BYGONE     MAGNIFICENCE. 


sionally  we  grew  so  tired  and  breathless  with  fighting  them 
that  we  had  to  desist, — and  immediately  the  donkey  would 

come  down  to  a  de 
liberate  walk.  This, 
with  the  fatigue,  and 

O 

the  sun,  would  put  a 
man  asleep  ;  and  as 
soon  as  the  man  was 
asleep,  the  donkey 
would  lie  down.  My 
donkey  shall  never 
see  his  boyhood's 
home  again.  lie  has 
lain  down  once  too 
often.  He  must  die. 


A   SPOILED   NAP. 


"We  all  stood  in  the 

vast  theatre  of  ancient  Ephesus, — the  stone-benched  amphi 
theatre  I  mean — and  had  our  picture  taken.  We  looked  as 
proper  there  as  we  would  look  any  where,  I  suppose.  We  do 
not  embellish  the  general  desolation  of  a  desert  much.  We 
add  what  dignity  we  can  to  a  stately  ruin  with  our  green  um 
brellas  and  jackasses,  but  it  is  little.  However,  we  mean 
well. 

I  wish  to  say  a  brief  word  of  the  aspect  of  Ephesus. 

On  a  high,  steep  hill,  toward  the  sea,  is  a  gray  ruin  of  pon 
derous  blocks  of  marble,  wherein,  tradition  says,  St.  Paul  was 
imprisoned  eighteen  centuries  ago.  From  these  old  walls  you 
have  the  finest  view  of  the  desolate  scene  where  once  stood 
Ephesus,  the  proudest  city  of  ancient  times,  and  whose  Temple 
of  Diana  was  so  noble  in  design,  and  so  exquisite  of  workman 
ship,  that  it  ranked  high  in  the  list  of  the  Seven  Wonders  of 
the  World. 

Behind  you  is  the  sea ;  in  front  is  a  level  green  valley,  (a 
marsh,  in  fact,)  extending  far  away  among  the  mountains  ;  to 
the  right  of  the  front  view  is  the  old  citadel  of  Ayassalook,  on 
a  high  hill ;  the  ruined  Mosque  of  the  Sultan  Selim  stands 
near  it  in  the  plain,  (this  is  built  over  the  grave  of  St.  John, 


BYGONE     MAGNIFICENCE.  421 

and  was  formerly  a  Christian  Church ;)  farther  toward  you  is 
the  hill  of  Pion,  around  whose  front  is  clustered  all  that  re 
mains  of  the  ruins  of  Ephesus  that  still  stand  ;  divided  from  it 
by  a  narrow  valley  is  the  long,  rocky,  rugged  mountain  of  Co- 
ressus.  The  scene  is  a  pretty  one,  and  yet  desolate — for  in 
that  wide  plain  no  man  can  live,  and  in  it  is  no  human  habit 
ation.  But  for  the  crumbling  arches  and  monstrous  piers  and 
broken  walls  that  rise  from  the  foot  of  the  hill  of  Pion,  one 
could  not  believe  that  in  this  place  once  stood  a  city  whose  re 
nown  is  older  than  tradition  itself.  It  is  incredible  to  reflect 
that  things  as  familiar  all  over  the  world  to-day  as  household 
words,  belong  in  the  history  and  in  the  shadowy  legends  of 
this  silent,  mournful  solitude.  "We  speak  of  Apollo  and  of 
Diana — they  were  born  here  ;  of  the  metamorphosis  of  Syrinx 
into  a  reed — it  was  done  here ;  of  the  great  god  Pan — he 
dwelt  in  the  caves  of  this  hill  of  Coressus ;  of  the  Amazons — 
this  was  their  best  prized  home ;  of  Bacchus  and  Hercules — 
both  fought  the  warlike  women  here ;  of  the  Cyclops — they 
laid  the  ponderous  marble  blocks  of  some  of  the  ruins  yonder; 
of  Homer — this  was  one  of  his  many  birthplaces  ;  of  Cimon 
of  Athens  ;  of  Alcibiades,  Lysander,  Agesilaus — they  visited 
here  ;  so  did  Alexander  the  Great ;  so  did  Hannibal  and  An- 
tiochus,  Scipio,  Lucullus  and  Sylla ;  Brutus,  Cassius,  Pompey,, 
Cicero,  and  Augustus  ;  Antony  was  a  judge  in  this  place,  and 
left  his  seat  in  the  open  court,  while  the  advocates  were  speak 
ing,  to  run  after  Cleopatra,  who  passed  the  door ;  from  this  city 
these  two  sailed  on  pleasure  excursions,  in  galleys  with  silver 
oars  and  perfumed  sails,  and  with  companies  of  beautiful  girls 
to  serve  them,  and  actors  and  musicians  to  amuse  them  ;  in 
days  that  seem  almost  modern,  so  remote  are  they  from  the 
early  history  of  this  city,  Paul  the  Apostle  preached  the  new 
religion  here,  and  so  did  John,  and  here  it  is  supposed  the  for 
mer  was  pitted  against  wild  beasts,  for  in  1  Corinthians,  xv..  32. 
he  says : 

"  If  after  the  manner  of  men  I  have  fought  with  beasts  at  Ephesus,"  &c., 

when  many  men  still  lived  who  had  seen  the  Christ ;   here 


422 


FRAGMENTS     OF     HISTORY. 


Mary  Magdalen  died,  and  here  the  Virgin  Mary  ended  her 
days  with  John,  albeit  Rome  has  since  judged  it  best  to  locate 
her  grave  elsewhere  ;  six  or  seven  hundred  years  ago — almost 
yesterday,  as  it  were — troops  of  mail-clad  Crusaders  thronged 
the  streets  ;  and  to  come  down  to  trifles,  we  speak  of  meander 
ing  streams,  and  find  a  new  interest  in  a  common  word  when 
we  discover  that  the  crooked  river  Meander,  in  yonder  valley, 
gave  it  to  our  dictionary.  It  makes  me  feel  as  old  as  these 

dreary  hills  to 

-  look        down 

upon  these 
moss-hung  ru 
ins,  this  his 
toric  desola 
tion.  One 
may  read  the 
Scriptures 
and  believe, 
but  he  can  not 
go  and  stand 
yonder  in  the 
ruined  theatre 
and  in  imag 
ination  people 
it  again  with 
the  vanished 
multitudes 
who  mobbed 
Paul's  com 
rades  there  and  shouted,  with  one  voice,  "  Great  is  Diana  of 
the  Ephesians  !"  The  idea  of  a  shout  in  such  a  solitude  as  this 
almost  makes  one  shudder. 

It  was  a  wonderful  city,  this  Ephesus.  Go  where  you  will 
about  these  broad  plains,  you  find  the  most  exquisitely  sculp 
tured  marble  fragments  scattered  thick  among  the  dust  and 
weeds  ;  and  protruding  from  the  ground,  or  lying  prone  upon 
it,  are  beautiful  fluted  columns  of  porphyry  and  all  precious 


ANCIENT   AMPHITHEATRE   AT  EPHESUS. 


A    RELIC. 


423 


marbles  ;  and  at  every  step  you  find  elegantly  carved  capitals 
and  massive  bases,  and  polished  tablets  engraved  with  Greek 
inscriptions.  It  is  a  world  of  precious  relics,  a  wilderness  of 
marred  and  mutilated  gems.  And  yet  what  are  these  things 
to  the  wonders  that  lie  buried  here  under  the  ground  ?  At 
Constantinople,  at  Pisa,  in  the  cities  of  Spain,  are  great 
mosques  and  cathedrals,  whose  grandest  columns  came  from 
the  temples  and  palaces  of  Ephesus,  and  yet  one  has  only  to 
scratch  the  ground  here  to  match  them.  "We  shall  never  know 
what  magnificence  is,  until  this  imperial  city  is  laid  bare  to 
the  sun. 

The  finest  piece  of  sculpture  we  have  yet  seen  and  the  one 
that  impressed 
us  most,  (for 
we  do  not  know 
much  about  art 
and  can  not  ea 
sily  work  up 
ourselves  into 
ecstacies  over 
it,)  is  one  that 
lies  in  this  old 
theatre  of  Eph 
esus  which  St. 
Paul's  riot  has 
made  so  cele 
brated.  It  is 
only  the  head 
less  body  of  a 
man,  clad  in  a 
coat  of  mail, 
with  a  Medusa 

head  upon  the  breast-plate,  but  we  feel  persuaded  that  such 
dignity  arid  such  majesty  were  never  thrown  into  a  form  of 
stone  before. 

What  builders  they  were,  these  men  of  antiquity !     The 
massive  arches  of  some  of  these  ruins  rest  upon  piers  that  are 


MODERN   AMPHITHEATRE   AT   EPHESUS. 


424 


MASSIVE     MASONRY 


fifteen  feet  square  and  built  entirely  of  solid  blocks  of  marble, 
some  of  which  are  as  large  as  a  Saratoga  trunk,  and  some  the 
size  of  a  boarding-house  sofa.  They  are  not  shells  or  shafts  of 
stone  tilled  inside  with  rubbish,  but  the  whole  pier  is  a  mass 
of  solid  masonry.  Vast  arches,  that  may  have  been  the  gates 
of  the  city,  are  built  in  the  same  way.  They  have  braved  the 
storms  and  sieges  of  three  thousand  years,  and  have  been  sha 
ken  by  many  an  earthquake,  but  still  they  stand.  "When  they 


KU1XS   OF   EPHESUS. 


dig  alongside  of  them,  they  find  ranges  of  ponderous  masonry 
that  are  as  perfect  in  every  detail  as  they  were  the  day  those 
old  Cyclopian  giants  finished  them.     An  English  Company  is 
going  to  excavate  Ephesus — and  then  ! 
And  now  am  I  reminded  of— 


THE     LEGEND. 


425 


THE    LEGEND    OF   THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS. 

In  the  Mount  of  Pion,  yonder,  is  the  Cave  of  the  Seven 
Sleepers.  Once  upon  a  time,  about  fifteen  hundred  years  ago, 
seven  young  men  lived  near  each  other  in  Ephesus,  who  be 
longed  to  the  despised  sect  of  the  Christians.  It  came  to  pass 
that  the  good  King  Maximilianus,  (I  am  telling  this  story  for 
nice  little  boys  and  girls,)  it  came  to  pass,  I  say,  that  the  good 
King  Maximilianus  fell  to  persecuting  the  Christians,  and  as 
time  rolled  on  he  made  it  very  warm  for  them.  So  the  seven 
young  men  said  one  to  the  other,  let  us  get  up  and  travel. 
And  they  got  up  and  traveled.  They  tarried  not  to  bid  their 
fathers  and  mothers  good-bye,  or  any  friend  they  knew.  They 
only  took  certain  moneys  which  their  parents  had,  and  gar- 


THE  JOURNEY. 


ments  that  belonged  unto  their  friends,  whereby  they  might 
remember  them  when  far  away ;  and  they  took  also  the  dog 
Ketmehr,  which  was  the  property  of  their  neighbor  Malchus, 
because  the  beast  did  run  his  head  into  a  noose  which  one  of 
the  young  men  was  carrying  carelessly,  and  they  had  not  time 
to  release  him ;  and  they  took  also  certain  chickens  that 


426  THE     SEVEN     SLEEPERS. 

seemed  lonely  in  the  neighboring  coops,  and  likewise  some 
bottles  of  curious  liquors  that  stood  near  the  grocer's  window  ; 
and  then  they  departed  from  the  city.  By-and-by  they  came 
to  a  marvelous  cave  in  the  Hill  of  Pion  and  entered  into  it 
and  feasted,  and  presently  they  hurried  on  again.  But  they 
forgot  the  bottles  of  curious  liquors,  and  left  them  behind. 
They  traveled  in  many  lands,  and  had  many  strange  adven 
tures.  They  were  virtuous  young  men,  and  lost  no  opportu 
nity  that  fell  in  their  way  to  make  their  livelihood.  Their 
motto  was  in  these  words,  namely,  "  Procrastination  is  the  thief 
of  time."  And  so,  whenever  they  did  come  upon  a  man  who 
was  alone,  they  said,  Behold,  this  person  hath  the  where 
withal — let  us  go  through  him.  And  they  went  through 
him.  At  the  end  of  five  years  they  had  waxed  tired  of  travel 
and  adventure,  and  longed  to  revisit  their  old  home  again  and 
hear  the  voices  and  see  the  faces  that  were  dear  unto  their 
youth.  Therefore  they  went  through  such  parties  as  fell  in 
their  way  where  they  sojourned  at  that  time,  and  journeyed 
back  toward  Ephesus  again.  For  the  good  King  Maximilianus 
was  become  converted  unto  the  new  faith,  and  the  Christians 
rejoiced  because  they  were  no  longer  persecuted.  One  day  as 
the  sun  went  down,  they  came  to  the  cave  in  the  Mount  of 
Pion,  and  they  said,  each  to  his  fellow,  Let  us  sleep  here,  and 
go  and  feast  and  make  merry  with  our  friends  when  the  morn 
ing  cometh.  And  each  of  the  seven  lifted  up  his  voice  and 
said,  It  is  a  whiz.  So  they  went  in,  and  lo,  where  they  had  put 
them,  there  lay  the  bottles  of  strange  liquors,  and  they  judged 
that  age  had  not  impaired  their  excellence.  Wherein  the  wan 
derers  were  right,  and  the  heads  of  the  same  were  level.  So 
each  of  the  young  men  drank  six  bottles,  and  behold  they  felt 
very  tired,  then,  and  lay  down  and  slept  soundly. 

"When  they  awoke,  one  of  them,  Johannes — surnamed  Smith- 
ianus — said,  We  are  naked.  And  it  was  so.  Their  raiment 
was  all  gone,  and  the  money  which  they  had  gotten  from  a 
stranger  whom  they  had  proceeded  through  as  they  approached 
the  city,  was  lying  upon  the  ground,  corroded  arid  rusted  and 
defaced.  Likewise  the  dog  Ketmehr  was  gone,  and  nothing 
save  the  brass  that  was  upon  his  collar  remained.  They  won- 


THE     SEVEN     SLEEPERS.  427 

dered  much  at  these  things.  But  they  took  the  money,  and 
they  wrapped  about  their  bodies  some  leaves,  and  came  up  to 
the  top  of  the  hill.  Then  were  they  perplexed.  The  wonder 
ful  temple  of  Diana  was  gone ;  many  grand  edifices  they  had 
never  seen  before  stood  in  the  city ;  men  in  strange  garbs 
moved  about  the  streets,  and  every  thing  was  changed. 

Johannes  said,  It  hardly  seems  like  Ephesus.  Yet  here  is 
the  great  gymnasium  ;  here  is  the  mighty  theatre,  wherein  I 
have  seen  seventy  thousand  men  assembled  ;  here  is  the  Agora ; 
there  is  the  font  where  the  sainted  John  the  Baptist  immersed 
the  converts ;  yonder  is  the  prison  of  the  good  St.  Paul,  where 
we  all  did  use  to  go  to  touch  the  ancient  chains  that  bound 
him  and  be  cured  of  our  distempers  ;  I  see  the  tomb  of  the  dis 
ciple  Luke,  and  afar  off  is  the  church  wherein  repose  the  ashes 
of  the  holy  John,  where  the  Christians  of  Ephesus  go  twice  a 
year  to  gather  the  dust  from  the  tomb,  which  is  able  to  make 
bodies  whole  again  that  are  corrupted  by  disease,  and  cleanse 
the  soul  from  sin  ;  but  see  how  the  wharves  encroach  upon  the 
sea,  and  what  multitudes  of  ships  are  anchored  in  the  bay ; 
see,  also,  how  the  city  hath  stretched  abroad,  far  over  the  val 
ley  behind  Pion,  and  even  unto  the  wralls  of  Ayassalook ;  and 
lo,  all  the  hills  are  white  with  palaces  and  ribbed  with  colon 
nades  of  marble.  How  mighty  is  Ephesus  become  ! 

And  wondering  at  what  their  eyes  had  seen,  they  went  down 
into  the  city  and  purchased  garments  and  clothed  themselves. 
And  when  they  would  have  passed  on,  the  merchant  bit  the 
coins  which  they  had  given  him,  with  his  teeth,  and  turned 
them  about  and  looked  curiously  upon  them,  and  cast  them 
upon  his  counter,  and  listened  if  they  rang  ;  and  then  he  said, 
These  be  bogus.  And  they  said,  Depart  thou  to  Hades,  and 
went  their  way.  When  they  were  come  to  their  houses,  they 
recognized  them,  albeit  they  seemed  old  and  mean  ;  and  they 
rejoiced,  and  were  glad.  They  ran  to  the  doors,  and  knocked, 
and  strangers  opened,  and  looked  inquiringly  upon  them.  And 
they  said,  with  great  excitement,  while  their  hearts  beat  high, 
and  the  color  in  their  faces  came  and  went,  Where  is  my 
father?  Where  is  my  mother?  Where  are  Dionysius  and 


4:28  THE     SEVEN     SLEEPERS. 

Serapion,  and  Pericles,  and  Deems  ?  And  the  strangers  that 
opened  said,  We  know  not  these.  The  Seven  said,  How,  you 
know  them  not  ?  How  long  have  ye  dwelt  here,  and  whither 
are  they  gone  that  dwelt  here  before  ye  ?  And  the  strangers 
said,  Ye  play  upon  us  with  a  jest,  young  men ;  we  and  our 
fathers  have  sojourned  under  these  roofs  these  six  generations ; 
the  names  ye  utter  rot  upon  the  tombs,  and  they  that  bore 
them  have  run  their  brief  race,  have  laughed  and  sung,  have 
borne  the  sorrows  and  the  weariness  that  were  allotted  them, 
and  are  at  rest ;  for  nine-score  years  the  summers  have  come 
and  gone,  and  the  autumn  leaves  have  fallen,  since  the  roses 
faded  out  of  their  cheeks  and  they  laid  them  to  sleep  with  the 
dead. 

Then  the  seven  young  men  turned  them  away  from  their 
homes,  and  the  strangers  shut  the  doors  upon  them.  The 
wanderers  marveled  greatly,  and  looked  into  the  faces  of  all 
they  met,  as  hoping  to  find  one  that  they  knew  ;  but  all  were 
strange,  and  passed  them  by  and  spake  no  friendly  word. 
They  were  sore  distressed  and  sad.  Presently  they  spake  unto 
a  citizen  and  said,  Who  is  King  in  Ephesus  ?  And  the  citizen 
answered  and  said,  Whence  come  ye  that  ye  know  not  that 
great  Laertius  reigns  in  Ephesus  ?  They  looked  one  at  the 
other,  greatly  perplexed,  and  presently  asked  again,  Where, 
then,  is  the  good  King  Maximilianus  ?  The  citizen  moved  him 
apart,  as  one  who  is  afraid,  and  said,  Yerily  these  men  be  mad, 
and  dream  dreams,  else  would  they  know  that  the  King 
whereof  they  speak  is  dead  above  two  hundred  years  agone. 

Then  the  scales  fell  from  the  eyes  of  the  Seven,  an  done  said, 
Alas,  that  we  drank  of  the  curious  liquors.  They  have  made 
us  weary,  and  in  dreamless  sleep  these  two  long  centuries  have 
we  lain.  Our  homes  are  desolate,  our  friends  are  dead.  Be 
hold,  the  jig  is  up — let  TIS  die.  And  that  same  day  went  they 
forth  and  laid  them  down  and  died.  And  in  that  self-same 
day,  likewise,  the  Seven-up  did  cease  in  Ephesus,  for  that  the 
Seven  that  were  up  were  down  again,  and  departed  and  dead 
withal.  And  the  names  that  be  upon  their  tombs,  even  unto 
this  time,  are  Johannes  Smithianus,  Trumps,  Gift,  High,  and 


THE     SEVEN     SLEEPERS. 


429 


Low,  Jack,  and  The  Game.    And  with  the  sleepers  lie  also  the 
bottles  wherein  were  once  the  curious  liquors ;  and  upon  them 
is  writ,  in 
ancient  let 
ters,    such 
words     as 
t  h  e  s  e — 
names     of 
heathen 
gods  of old 
en      time, 
perchance : 
Rumpunch, 
Jinsling, 
Egnog. 

Such    is 
the     story 

of  the  Seven  Sleepers,  (with  slight  variations,)  and  I  know  it  is 
true,  because  I  have  seen  the  cave  myself. 

Really,  so  firm  a  faith  had  the  ancients  in  this  legend,  that 
as  late  as  eight  or  nine  hundred  years  ago,  learned  travelers 
held  it  in  superstitious  fear.  Two  of  them  record  that  they 
ventured  into  it,  but  ran  quickly  out  again,  not  daring  to  tarry 
lest  they  should  fall  asleep  and  outlive  their  great  grand-chil 
dren  a  century  or  so.  Even  at  this  day  the  ignorant  denizens 
of  the  neighboring  country  prefer  not  to  sleep  in  it. 


GRAVES   OF   THE   SEVEN   SLEEPERS. 


CHAPTEE   XLI. 

"TTTUEIST  I  last  made  a  memorandum,  we  were  at  Ephesus. 
*  *  We  are  in  Syria,  now,  encamped  in  the  mountains  of 
Lebanon.  The  interregnum  has  been  long,  both  as  to  time 
and  distance.  We  brought  not  a  relic  from  Ephesus !  After 
gathering  up  fragments  of  sculptured  marbles  and  breaking  or 
naments  from  the  interior  work  of  the  Mosques ;  and  after 
bringing  them  at  a  cost  of  infinite  trouble  and  fatigue,  five 
miles  on  muleback  to  the  railway  depot,  a  government  officer 
compelled  all  who  had  such  things  to  disgorge !  He  had  an 
order  from  Constantinople  to  look  out  for  our  party,  and  see  that 
we  carried  nothing  off.  It  was  a  wise,  a  just,  and  a  well-de 
served  rebuke,  but  it  created  a  sensation.  I  never  resist  a 
temptation  to  plunder  a  stranger's  premises  without  feeling  in 
sufferably  vain  about  it.  This  time  I  felt  proud  beyond  ex 
pression.  I  was  serene  in  the  midst  of  the  scoldings  that  were 
heaped  upon  the  Ottoman  government  for  its  affront  offered  to 
a  pleasuring  party  of  entirely  respectable  gentlemen  and  ladies. 
I  said,  "  We  that  have  free  souls,  it  touches  us  not."  The  shoe 
not  only  pinched  our  party,  but  it  pinched  hard ;  a  principal 
sufferer  discovered  that  the  imperial  order  was  inclosed  in  an 
envelop  bearing  the  seal  of  the  British  Embassy  at  Constanti 
nople,  and  therefore  must  have  been  inspired  by  the  represent 
ative  of  the  Queen.  This  was  bad — very  bad.  Coming  solely 
from  the  Ottomans,  it  might  have  signified  only  Ottoman  hatred 
of  Christians,  and  a  vulgar  ignorance  as  to  genteel  methods 
of  expressing  it ;  but  coming  from  the  Christianized,  educated, 
politic  British  legation,  it  simply  intimated  that  we  were  a  sort 


APPROACHING     HOLY     LAND.  431 

of  gentlemen  and  ladies  who  would  bear  watching !  So  the 
party  regarded  it,  and  were  incensed  accordingly.  The  truth 
doubtless  was,  that  the  same  precautions  would  have  been  ta 
ken  against  any  travelers,  because  the  English  Company  who 
have  acquired  the  right  to  excavate  Ephesus,  and  have  paid  a 
great  sum  for  that  right,  need  to  be  protected,  and  deserve  to 
be.  They  can  not  afford  to  run  the  risk  of  having  their  hos 
pitality  abused  by  travelers,  especially  since  travelers  are  such 
notorious  scorners  of  honest  behavior. 

We  sailed  from  Smyrna,  in  the  wildest  spirit  of  expectancy, 
for  the  chief  feature,  the  grand  goal  of  the  expedition,  was 
near  at  hand — we  were  approaching  the  Holy  Land !  Such  a 
burrowing  into  the  hold  for  trunks  that  had  lain  buried  for 
weeks,  yes  for  months  ;  such  a  hurrying  to  and  fro  above  decks 
and  below  ;  such  a  riotous  system  of  packing  and  unpacking ; 
such  a  littering  up  of  the  cabins  with  shirts  and  skirts,  and  in 
describable  and  unclassable  odds  and  ends ;  such  a  making  up 
of  bundles,  and  setting  apart  of  umbrellas,  green  spectacles 
and  thick  veils ;  such  a  critical  inspection  of  saddles  and  bri 
dles  that  had  never  yet  touched  horses ;  such  a  cleaning  and 
loading  of  revolvers  and  examining  of  bowie-knives ;  such  a 
half-soling  of  the  seats  of  pantaloons  with  serviceable  buck 
skin  ;  then  such  a  poring  over  ancient  maps ;  such  a  reading 
up  of  Bibles  and  Palestine  travels ;  such  a  marking  out  of 
routes ;  such  exasperating  efforts  to  divide  up  the  company 
into  little  bands  of  congenial  spirits  who  might  make  the  long 
and  arduous  journey  without  quarreling ;  and  morning,  noon 
and  night,  such  mass-meetings  in  the  cabins,  such  speech-mak 
ing,  such  sage  suggesting,  such  worrying  and  quarreling,  and 
such  a  general  raising  of  the  very  mischief,  was  never  seen  in 
the  ship  before ! 

But  it  is  all  over  now.  We  are  cut  up  into  parties  of  six  or 
eight,  and  by  this  time  are  scattered  far  and  wide.  Ours  is 
the  only  one,  however,  that  is  venturing  on  what  is  called  "  the 
long  trip  " — that  is,  out  into  Syria,  by  Baalbec  to  Damascus, 
and  thence  down  through  the  full  length  of  Palestine.  It 
would  be  a  tedious,  and  also  a  too  risky  journey,  at  this  hot 


432  THE    "LONG"    ROUTE    ADOPTED. 

season  of  the  year,  for  any  but  strong,  healthy  men,  accus 
tomed  somewhat  to  fatigue  and  rough  life  in  the  open  air. 
The  other  parties  will  take  shorter  journeys. 

For  the  last  two  months  we  have  been  in  a  worry  about  one 
portion  of  this  Holy  Land  pilgrimage.  I  refer  to  transporta 
tion  service.  We  knew  very  well  that  Palestine  was  a  coun 
try  which  did  not  do  a  large  passenger  business,  and  every 
man  we  came  across  who  knew  any  thing  about  it  gave  us  to 
understand  that  not  half  of  our  party  would  be  able  to  get 
dragomen  and  animals.  At  Constantinople  every  body  fell  to 
telegraphing  the  American  Consuls  at  Alexandria  and  Beirout 
to  give  notice  that  we  wanted  dragomen  and  transportation. 
We  were  desperate — would  take  horses,  jackasses,  cameleop- 
ards,  kangaroos — any  thing.  At  Smyrna,  more  telegraphing 
was  done,  to  the  same  end.  Also,  fearing  for  the  worst,  we 
telegraphed  for  a  large  number  of  seats  in  the  diligence  for 
Damascus,  and  horses  for  the  ruins  of  Baalbec. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  a  notion  got  abroad  in  Syria 
and  Egypt  that  the  whole  population  of  the  Province  of 
America  (the  Turks  consider  us  a  trifling  little  province  in 
some  unvisited  corner  of  the  world,)  were  coming  to  the  Holy 
Land — and  so,  when  we  got  to  Beirout  yesterday,  we  found 
the  place  full  of  dragomen  and  their  outfits.  We  had  all  in 
tended  to  go  by  diligence  to  Damascus,  and  switch  oft'  to  Baal 
bec  as  we  went  along — because  we  expected  to  rejoin  the  ship, 
go  to  Mount  Carmel,  and  take  to  the  woods  from  there.  How 
ever,  when  our  own  private  party  of  eight  found  that  it  was 
possible,  and  proper  enough,  to  make  the  "long  trip,"  we 
adopted  that  programme.  We  have  never  been  much  trouble 
to  a  Consul  before,  but  we  have  been  a  fearful  nuisance  to  our 
Consul  at  Beirout.  I  mention  this  because  I  can  not  help  ad 
miring  his  patience,  his  industry,  and  his  accommodating 
spirit.  I  mention  it  also,  because  I  think  some  of  our  ship's 
company  did  not  give  him  as  full  credit  for  his  excellent  ser 
vices  as  he  deserved. 

Well,  out  of  our  eight,  three  were  selected  to  attend  to  all 
business  connected  with  the  expedition.  The  rest  of  us  had 


PROSPECTING     BEYROUT.  433 

nothing  to  do  but  look  at  the  beautiful  city  of  Beirout,  with  its 
bright,  new  houses  nestled  among  a  wilderness  of  green  shrub 
bery  spread  abroad  over  an  upland  that  sloped  gently  down  to 
the  sea ;  and  also  at  the  mountains  of  Lebanon  that  environ 
it ;  and  likewise  to  bathe  in  the  transparent  blue  water  that 
rolled  its  billows  about  the  ship  (we  did  not  know  there  were 
sharks  there.)  We  had  also  to  range  up  and  down  through 
the  town  and  look  at  the  costumes.  These  are  picturesque 
and  fanciful,  but  not  so  varied  as  at  Constantinople  and  Smyr 
na  ;  the  women  of  Beirout  add  an  agony — in  the  two  former 
cities  the  sex  wear  a  thin  veil  which  one  can  see  through  (and 
they  often  expose  their  ancles,)  but  at  Beirout  they  cover  their 
entire  faces  with  dark-colored  or  black  veils,  so  that  they  look 
like  mummies,  and  then  expose  their  breasts  to  the  public.  A 
young  gentleman  (I  believe  he  was  a  Greek,)  volunteered  to 
show  us  around  the  city,  and  said  it  would  afford  him  great 
pleasure,  because  he  was  studying  English  and  wanted  practice 
in  that  language.  When  we  had  finished  the  rounds,  how 
ever,  he  called  for  remuneration — said  he  hoped  the  gentlemen 
would  give  him  a  trifle  in  the  way  of  a  few  piastres  (equivalent 
to  a  few  five  cent  pieces.)  We  did  so.  The  Consul  was  sur 
prised  when  he  heard  it,  and  said  he  knew  the  young  fellow's 
family  very  well,  and  that  they  were  an  old  and  highly  respect 
able  family  and  worth  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars ! 
Some  people,  so  situated,  would  have  been  ashamed  of  the 
berth  he  had  with  us  and  his  manner  of  crawling  into  it. 

At  the  appointed  time  our  business  committee  reported,  and 
said  all  things  were  in  readiness — that  we  were  to  start  to-day, 
with  horses,  pack  animals,  and  tents,  and  go  to  Baalbec,  Da 
mascus,  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  and  thence  southward  by  the  way 
of  the  scene  of  Jacob's  Dream  and  other  notable  Bible  local 
ities  to  Jerusalem — from  thence  probably  to  the  Dead  Sea,  but 
possibly  not — and  then  strike  for  the  ocean  and  rejoin  the  ship 
three  or  four  weeks  hence  at  Joppa  ;  terms,  five  dollars  a  day 
apiece,  in  gold,  and  every  thing  to  be  furnished  by  the  drago 
man.  They  said  we  would  live  as  well  as  at  a  hotel.  I  had 
read  something  like  that  before,  and  did  not  shame  my  judg- 

28 


434 


THE     HORSE     HOSPITAL. 


ment  by  believing  a  word  of  it.  I  said  nothing,  however, 
but  packed  up  a  blanket  and  a  shawl  to  sleep  in,  pipes  and 
tobacco,  two  or  three  woollen  shirts,  a  portfolio,  a  guide-book, 
and  a  Bible.  I  also  took  along  a  towel  and  a  cake  of  soap,  to 
inspire  respect  in  the  Arabs,  who  would  take  me  for  a  king  in 
disguise. 

We  were  to  select  our  horses  at  3  p.  M.  At  that  hour  Abra 
ham,  the 
dragoman, 
m  arshaled 
them  before 
us.  With 
all  solemni 
ty  I  set  it 
down  here, 
that  those 
horses  were 
the  hardest 
lot  I  ever 
did  come 
across,  and 
their  accou 
tre  m  e  n  t  s 
were  in  ex 
quisite  keep 
ing  with 
their  style. 

One  brute  had  an  eye  out ;  another  had  his  tail  sawed  off  close, 
like  a  rabbit,  and  was  proud  of  it ;  another  had  a  bony  ridge 
running  from  his  neck  to  his  tail,  like  one  of  those  ruined 
aqueducts  one  sees  about  Rome,  and  had  a  neck  on  him  like 
a  bowsprit ;  they  all  limped,  and  had  sore  backs,  and  likewise 
raw  places  and  old  scales  scattered  about  their  persons  like 
brass  nails  in  a  hair  trunk  ;  their  gaits  were  marvelous  to 
contemplate,  and  replete  with  variety — under  way  the  proces 
sion  looked  like  a  fleet  in  a  storm.  It  was  fearful.  Blucher 
shook  his  head  and  said  : 


THE   SELECTION. 


SUMPTUOUS     VAGABONDIZING.  435 

"  That  dragon  is  going  to  get  himself  into  trouble  fetching 
these  old  crates  out  of  the  hospital  the  way  they  are,  unless  he 
has  got  a  permit." 

I  said  nothing.  The  display  was  exactly  according  to  the 
guide-book,  and  were  we  not  traveling  by  the  guide-book  ?  I 
selected  a  certain  horse  because  I  thought  I  saw  him  shy,  and 
I  thought  that  a  horse  that  had  spirit  enough  to  shy  was  not 
to  be  despised. 

At  6  o'clock  P.  M.,  we  came  to  a  halt  here  on  the  breezy 
summit  of  a  shapely  mountain  overlooking  the  sea,  and  the 
handsome  valley  where  dwelt  some  of  those  enterprising  Phoe 
nicians  of  ancient  times  we  read  so  much  about ;  all  around 
us  are  what  were  once  the  dominions  of  Hiram,  King  of  Tyre, 
who  furnished  timber  from  the  cedars  of  these  Labanon  hills 
to  build  portions  of  King  Solomon's  Temple  with. 

Shortly  after  six,  our  pack  train  arrived.  I  had  not  seen  it 
before,  and  a  good  right  I  had  to  be  astonished.  We  had  nine 
teen  serving  men  and  twenty-six  pack  mules !  It  was  a  perfect 
caravan.  It  looked  like  one,  too,  as  it  wound  among  the  rocks. 
I  wondered  what  in  the  very  mischief  we  wanted  with  such  a 
vast  turn-out  as  that,  for  eight  men.  I  wondered  awhile,  but 
soon  I  began  to  long  for  a  tin  plate,  and  some  bacon  and  beans. 
I  had  camped  out  many  and  many  a  time  before,  and  knew 
just  what  was  coming.  I  w^ent  off,  without  waiting  for  serv 
ing  men,  and  unsaddled  my  horse,  and  washed  such  portions 
of  his  ribs  and  his  spine  as  projected  through  his  hide,  and 
when  I  came  back,  behold  five  stately  circus  tents  were  up — 
tents  that  were  brilliant,  within,  with  blue,  and  gold,  and 
crimson,  and  all  manner  of  splendid  adornment!  I  was 
speechless.  Then  they  brought  eight  little  iron  bedsteads,  and 
set  them  up  in  the  tents ;  they  put  a  soft  mattress  and  pillows 
and  good  blankets  and  two  snow-white  sheets  on  each  bed. 
Next,  they  rigged  a  table  about  the  centre-pole,  and  on  it  pla 
ced  pewter  pitchers,  basins,  soap,  and  the  whitest  of  towels — 
one  set  for  each  man  ;  they  pointed  to  pockets  in  the  tent,  and 
said  we  could  put  our  small  trifles  in  them  for  convenience, 
and  if  \ve  needed  pins  or  such  things,  they  were  sticking  every 


436  SUMPTUOUS    VAGABONDIZING. 

where.  Then  came  the  finishing  touch — they  spread  carpets 
on  the  floor  !  I  simply  said,  "  If  you  call  this  camping  out, 
all  right — but  it  isn't  the  style  /  am  used  to  ;  my  little  bag 
gage  that  I  brought  along  is  at  a  discount." 

It  grew  dark,  and  they  put  candles  on  the  tables — candles 
set  in  bright,  new,  brazen  candlesticks.     And  soon  the  bell — a 


CAMPING   OUT. 


genuine,  simon-pure  bell — rang,  and  we  were  invited  to  "  the 
saloon."  I  had  thought  before  that  we  had  a  tent  or  so  too 
many,  but  now  here  was  one,  at  least,  provided  for  ;  it  was  to 
be  used  for  nothing  but  an  eating-saloon.  Like  the  others,  it 
was  high  enough  for  a  family  of  giraffes  to  live  in,  and  was 
very  handsome  and  clean  and  bright-colored  within.  It  was  a 
gem  of  a  place.  A  table  for  eight,  and  eight  canvas  chairs ;  a 
table-cloth  and  napkins  whose  whiteness  and  whose  fineness 
laughed  to  scorn  the  things  we  were  used  to  in  the  great  ex 
cursion  steamer ;  knives  and  forks,  soup-plates,  dinner-plates 
— every  thing,  in  the  handsomest  kind  of  style.  It  was  won 
derful  !  And  they  call  this  camping  out.  Those  stately  fel 
lows  in  baggy  trowsers  and  turbaned  fezzes  brought  in  a  dinner 
which  consisted  of  roast  mutton,  roast  chicken,  roast  goose, 


UNNECESSARY     APOLOGY.  437 

potatoes,  bread,  tea,  pudding,  apples,  and  delicious  grapes; 
the  viands  were  better  cooked  than  any  we  had  eaten  for 
weeks,  and  the  table  made  a  finer  appearance,  with  its  large 
German  silver  candlesticks  and  other  finery,  than  any  table  we 
had  sat  down  to  for  a  good  while,  and  yet  that  polite  drago 
man,  Abraham,  came  bowing  in  and  apologizing  for  the  whole 
affair,  on  account  of  the  unavoidable  confusion  of  getting 
under  way  for  a  very  long  trip,  and  promising  to  do  a  great 
deal  better  in  future  ! 

It  is  midnight,  now,  and  we  break  camp  at  six  in  the  morn 
ing. 

They  call  this  camping  out.  At  this  rate  it  is  a  glorious 
privilege  to  be  a  pilgrim  to  the  Holy  Land. 


CHAPTEE   XLII. 


~TT7~E  are  camped  near  Temnin-el-Foka — a  name  which  the 
V  V  boys  have  simplified  a  good  deal,  for  the  sake  of  con 
venience  in  spelling.  They  call  it  Jacksonville.  It  sounds  a 
little  strangely,  here  in  the  Valley  of  Lebanon,  but.  it  has  the 
merit  of  being  easier  to  remember  than  the  Arabic  name. 

"COME  LIKE  SPIRITS,    SO  DEPART." 

"The  night  shall  be  filled  with  music, 
And  the  cares  that  infest  the  day 
Shall  fold  their  tents  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away." 

I  slept  very  soundly  last  night,  yet  when  the  dragoman's 
bell  rang  at  half-past  five  this  morning  and  the  cry  went  abroad 
of  "  Ten  minutes  to  dress  for  breakfast !"  I  heard  both.  It- 
surprised  me,  because  I  have  not  heard  the  breakfast  gong  in 
the  ship  for  a  month,  and  whenever  we  have  had  occasion  to 
fire  a  salute  at  daylight,  I  have  only  found  it  out  in  the  course 
of  conversation  afterward.  However,  camping  out,  even 
though  it  be  in  a  gorgeous  tent,  makes  one  fresh  and  lively  in 
the  morning — especially  if  the  air  you  are  breathing  is  the 
cool,  fresh  air  of  the  mountains. 

I  was  dressed  within  the  ten  minutes,  and  came  out,  The 
saloon  tent  had  been  stripped  of  its  sides,  and  had  nothing  left 
but  its  roof;  so  when  we  sat  down  to  table  we  could  look  out 
over  a  noble  panorama  of  mountain,  sea  and  hazy  valley.  And 
sitting  thus,  the  sun  rose  slowly  up  and  suffused  the  picture 
with  a  world  of  rich  coloring. 


THE     HORSE     "JERICHO."  43',) 

Hot  mutton  chopst  fried  chicken,  omelettes,  fried  potatoes 
and  coffee — all  excellent.  This  was  the  bill  of  fare.  It  was 
sauced  with  a  savage  appetite  purchased  by  hard  riding  the 
day  before,  and  refreshing  sleep  in  a  pure  atmosphere.  As  I 
called  for  a  second  cup  of  coffee,  I  glanced  over  my  shoulder, 
and  behold  our  white  village  was  gone — the  splendid  tents  had 
vanished  like  magic !  It  was  wonderful  how  quickly  those 
Arabs  had  "folded  their  tents;"  and  it  was  wonderful,  also, 
how  quickly  they  had  gathered  the  thousand  odds  and  ends  of 
the  camp  together  and  disappeared  with  them. 

By  half-past  six  we  were  under  way,  and  all  the  Syrian 
world  seemed  to  be  under  way  also.  The  road  was  filled  with 
mule  trains  and  long  processions  of  camels.  This  reminds  me 
that  vse  have  been  trying  for  some  time  to  think  what  a  camel 
looks  like,  and  now  we  have  made  it  out.  When  he  is  down 
on  all  his  knees,  flat  on  his  breast  to  receive  his  load,  he  looks 
something  like  a  goose  swimming ;  and  when  he  is  upright  he 
looks  like  an  ostrich  with  an  extra  set  of  legs.  Camels  are  not 
beautiful,  and  their  long  under  lip  gives  them  an  exceedingly 
"gallus"*  expression.  They  have  immense,  flat,  forked  cush 
ions  of  feet,  that  make  a  track  in  the  dust  like  a  pie 
with  a  slice  cut  out  of  it.  They  are  not  particular  about 
their  diet.  They  would  eat  a  tombstone  if  they  could 
bite  it.  A  thistle  grows  about  here  which  has  needles  on  it 
that  would  pierce  through  leather, 
I  think  ;  if  one  touches  you,  you 
can  find  relief  in  nothing  but  pro 
fanity.  The,  camels  eat  these. 
They  show  by  their  actions  that 
they  enjoy  them.  I  suppose  it 
would  be  a  real  treat  to  a  camel 
to  have  a  keg  of  nails  for  supper. 

While  I  am   speaking  of  ani-  A  GOOD 

mals,  I  will  mention  that  I  have 

a  horse  now  by  the  name  of  "  Jericho."  He  is  a  mare.  I  have 
seen  remarkable  horses  before,  but  none  so  remarkable  as  this. 
I  wanted  a  horse  that  could  shy,  and  this  one  fills  the  bill.  I 

*  Excuse  the  slang — no  other  word  will  describe  it. 


•±40 


THE     HORSE     UJ  ERICH  O. 


had  an  idea  that  shying  indicated  spirit.  If  I  was  correct,  I 
have  got  the  most  spirited  horse  on  earth.  He  shies  at  every 
thing  he  comes  across,  with  the  utmost  impartiality.  He  ap 
pears  to  have  a  mortal  dread  of  telegraph  poles,  especially ; 
and  it  is  fortunate  that  these  are  on  both  sides  of  the  road, 
because  as  it  is  now,  I  never  fall  off  twice  in  succession  on  the 
same  side.  If  I  fell  on  the  same  side  always,  it  would  get  to 
be  monotonous  after  a  while.  This  creature  has  scared  at 
every  thing  he  has  seen  to-day,  except  a  haystack.  He  walked 
up  to  that  with  an  intrepidity  and  a  recklessness  that  were 
astonishing.  And  it  would  fill  any  one  with  admiration  to  see 
how  he  preserves  his  self-possession  in  the  presence  of  a  barley 
sack.  This  dare-devil  bravery  will  be  the  death  of  this  horse 
some  day. 

He  is  not  particularly  fast,  but  I  think  he  will  get  me  through 
the  Holy  Land.  He  has  only  one  fault.  His  tail  has  been 
chopped  off  or  else  he  has  sat  down  on  it  too  hard,  some  time 

or  other,  and  he  has  to 
fight  the  flies  with  his 
heels.  This  is  all  very 
well,  but  when  he  tries  to 
kick  a  fly  off  the  top  of 
his  head  with  his  hind 
foot,  it  is  too  much  varie 
ty.  He  is  going  to  get 
himself  into  trouble  that 
way  some  day.  He  reach 
es  around  and  bites  my 
legs  too.  I  do  not  care 
particularly  about  that, 
only  I  do  not  like  to  see  a 
horse  too  sociable. 

I  think  the  owner  of  this 
prize  had  a  wrong  opinion 
about  him.  He  had  an 
idea  that  he  was  one  of 

INTERESTING    FETE. 

those      fiery,       untamed 
steeds,  but  he  is  not  of  that  character.     I  know  the  Arab  had 


ON     HISTORICAL     GROUND.  441 

this  idea,  because  when  he  brought  the  horse  out  for  inspection 
in  Beirout,  he  kept  jerking  at  the  bridle  and  shouting  in  Ara 
bic,  "  Ho  !  will  you  ?  Do  you  want  to  run  away,  you  ferocious 
beast,  and  break  your  neck  ?"  when  all  the  time  the  horse  was 
not  doing  any  thing  in  the  world,  and  only  looked  like  he 
wanted  to  lean  up  against  something  and  think.  Whenever 
he  is  not  shying  at  things,  or  reaching  after  a  fly,  he  wants  to 

•r         O  v   ' 

do  that  yet.     How  it  would  surprise  his  owner  to  know  this. 

We  have  been  in  a  historical  section  of  country  all  day.  At 
noon  we  camped  three  hours  and  took  luncheon  at  Mekseh, 
near  the  junction  of  the  Lebanon  Mountains  and  the  Jebel  el 
Kuneiyiseh,  and  looked  down  into  the  immense,  level,  garden- 
like  Valley  of  Lebanon.  To-night  we  are  camping  near  the 
same  valley,  and  have  a  very  wide  sweep  of  it  in  view.  We 
can  see  the  long,  whale-backed  ridge  of  Mount  Hermon  pro 
jecting  above  the  eastern  hills.  The  "  dews  of  Hermon  "  are 
falling  upon  us  now,  and  the  tents  are  almost  soaked  with 
them. 

Over  the  way  from  us,  and  higher  up  the  valley,  we  can  dis 
cern,  through  the  glasses,  the  faint  outlines  of  the  wonderful 
ruins  of  Baalbec,  the  supposed  Baal-Gad  of  Scripture.  Joshua, 
and  another  person,  were  the  two  spies  who  were  sent  into 
this  land  of  Canaan  by  the  children  of  Israel  to  report  upon 
its  character — I  mean  they  were  the  spies  who  reported  favor 
ably.  They  took  back  with  them  some  specimens  of  the  grapes 
of  this  country,  and  in  the  children's  picture-books  they  are 
always  represented  as  bearing  one  monstrous  bunch  swung  to 
a  pole  between  them,  a  respectable  load  for  a  pack-train.  The 
Sunday-school  books  exaggerated  it  a  little.  The  grapes  are 
most  excellent  to  this  day,  but  the  bunches  are  not  as  large  as 
those  in  the  pictures.  I  was  surprised  and  hurt  when  I  saw 
them,  because  those  colossal  bunches  of  grapes  were  one  of  my 
most  cherished  juvenile  traditions. 

Joshua  reported  favorably,  and  the  children  of  Israel  jour 
neyed  on,  with  Moses  at  the  head  of  the  general  government, 
and  Joshua  in  command  of  the  army  of  six  hundred  thousand 
fighting  men.  Of  women  and  children  and  civilians  there  was 


442 


THE     ANCIENT     RAID. 


a  countless  swarm.  Of  all  that  mighty  host,  none  but  the  two 
faithful  spies  ever  lived  to  set  their  feet  in  the  Promised  Land. 
They  and  their  descendants  wandered  forty  years  in  the  desert, 


SUNDAY-SCHOOL   GRAPES. 


and  then  Moses,  the  gifted  warrior,  poet,  statesman  and  phi 
losopher,  went  up  into  Pisgah  and  met  his  mysterious  fate. 
Where  he  was  buried  no  man  knows — for 

«  »    *    *    no  man  dug  that  sepulchre, 
And  no  man  saw  it  e'er — 

For  the  Sons  of  God  upturned  the  sod 
And  laid  the  dead  man  there  1" 

Then  Joshua  began  his  terrible  raid,  and  from  Jericho  clear 
to  this  Baal-Gad,  he  swept  the  land  like  the  Genius  of  Destruc 
tion.  He  slaughtered  the  people,  laid  waste  their  soil,  and 
razed  their  cities  to  the  ground.  He  wasted  thirty-one  kings 
also.  One  may  call  it  that,  though  really  it  can  hardly  be 
called  wasting  them,  because  there  were  always  plenty  of  kings 
in  those  days,  and  to  spare.  At  any  rate,  he  destroyed  thirty- 
one  kings,  and  divided  up  their  realms  among  his  Israelites.* 
He  divided  up  this  valley  stretched  out  here  before  us,  and  so 
it  was  once  Jewish  territory.  The  Jews  have  long  since  dis 
appeared  from  it,  however. 


NOAH'S   TOMB.  443 

Back  yonder,  an  hour's  journey  from  here,  we  passed  through 
an  Arab  village  of  stone  dry-goods  boxes  (they  look  like  that,) 
where  Noah's  tomb  lies  under  lock  and  key.  [Noah  built  the 
ark.]  Over  these  old  hills  and  valleys  the  ark  that  contained 
all  that  was  left  of  a  vanished  world  once  floated. 

I  make  no  apology  for  detailing  the  above  information.  It 
will  be  news  to  some  of  my  readers,  at  any  rate. 

Noah's  tomb  is  built  of  stone,  and  is  covered  with  a  long 
stone  building.  Bucksheesh  let  us  in.  The  building  h^id  to 
be  long,  because  the  grave  of  the  honored  old  navigator  is  two 
hundred  and  ten  feet  long  itself!  It  is  only  about  four  feet 
high,  though.  He  must  have  cast  a  shadow  like  a  lightning- 
rod.  The  proof  that  this  is  the  genuine  spot  where  Noah  was 
buried  can  only  be  doubted  by  uncommonly  incredulous  peo 
ple.  The  evidence  is  pretty  straight.  Shem,  the  son  of  Noah, 
was  present  at  the  burial,  and  showed  the  place  to  his  de 
scendants,  who  transmitted  the  knowledge  to  their  descendants, 
and  the  lineal  descendants  of  these  introduced  themselves  to 
us  to-day.  It  was  pleasant  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  mem 
bers  of  so  respectable  a  family.  It  was  a  thing  to  be  proud  of. 
It  was  the  next  thing  to  being  acquainted  with  Noah  himself. 

Noah's  memorable  voyage  will  always  possess  a  living  in 
terest  for  me,  henceforward. 

If  ever  an  oppressed  race  existed,  it  is  this  one  we  see  fet 
tered  around  us  under  the  inhuman  tyranny  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire.  I  wish  Europe  would  let  Russia  annihilate  Turkey  a 
little — not  much,  but  enough  to  make  it  difficult  to  find  the 
place  again  without  a  divining-rod  or  a  diving-bell.  The  Sy 
rians  are  very  poor,  and  yet  they  are  ground  down  by  a  sys 
tem  of  taxation  that  would  drive  any  other  nation  frantic. 
Last  year  their  taxes  were  heavy  enough,  in  all  conscience — but 
this  year  they  have  been  increased  by  the  addition  of  taxes  that 
were  forgiven  them  in  times  of  famine  in  former  years.  On 
top  of  this  the  Government  has  levied  a  tax  of  one-tenth  of  the 
whole  proceeds  of  the  land.  This  is  only  half  the  story.  The 
Pacha  of  a  Pachalic  does  not  trouble  himself  with  appointing 
tax-collectors.  He  figures  up  what  all  these  taxes  ought  to 


444  AN     UNFORTUNATE     PEOPLE. 

amount  to  in  a  certain  district.  Then  he  farms  the  collection 
out.  He  calls  the  rich  men  together,  the  highest  bidder  gets 
the  speculation,  pays  the  Pacha  on  the  spot,  and  then  sells  out 
to  smaller  fry,  who  sell  in  turn  to  a  piratical  horde  of  still 
smaller  fry.  These  latter  compel  the  peasant  to  bring  his  little 
trifle  of  grain  to  the  village,  at  his  own  cost.  It  must  be 
weighed,  the  various  taxes  set  apart,  and  the  remainder  re 
turned  to  the  producer.  But  the  collector  delays  this  duty  day 
after  day,  while  the  producer's  family  are  perishing  for  bread  ; 
at  last  the  poor  wretch,  who  can  not  but  understand  the  game, 
says,  "  Take  a  quarter — take  half — take  two-thirds  if  you  will, 
and  let  me  go  !"  It  is  a  most  outrageous  state  of  things. 

These  people  are  naturally  good-hearted  and  intelligent,  and 
with  education  and  liberty,  would  be  a  happy  and  contented 
race.  They  often  appeal  to  the  stranger  to  know  if  the  great 
world  will  not  some  day  come  to  their  relief  and  save  them. 
The  Sultan  has  been  lavishing  money  like  water  in  England 
and  Paris,  but  his  subjects  are  suffering  for  it  now. 

This  fashion  of  camping  out  bewilders  me.  We  have  boot 
jacks  and  a  bath-tub,  now,  and  yet  all  the  mysteries  the  pack- 
mules  carry  are  not  revealed.  What  next  ? 


CHAPTEE  XLIII. 

WE  had  a  tedious  ride  of  about  five  hours,  in  the  sun, 
across  the  Valley  of  Lebanon.  It  proved  to  be  not 
quite  so  much  of  a  garden  as  it  had  seemed  from  the  hill-sides. 
It  was  a  desert,  weed-grown  waste,  littered  thickly  with  stones 
the  size  of  a  man's  fist.  Here  and  there  the  natives  had 
scratched  the  ground  and  reared  a  sickly  crop  of  grain,  but 
for  the  most  part  the  valley  was  given  up  to  a  handful  of  shep 
herds,  whose  flocks  were  doing  what  they  honestly  could  to 
get  a  living,  but  the  chances  were  against  them.  We  saw 
rude  piles  of  stones  standing  near  the  roadside,  at  intervals, 
and  recognized  the  custom  of  marking  boundaries  which  ob 
tained  in  Jacob's  time.  There  were  no  walls,  no  fences,  no 
hedges — nothing  to  secure  a  man's  possessions  but  these  ran 
dom  heaps  of  stones.  The  Israelites  held  them  sacred  in  the 
old  patriarchal  times,  and  these  other  Arabs,  their  lineal  de 
scendants,  do  so  likewise.  An  American,  of  ordinary  intelli 
gence,  would  soon  widely  extend  his  property,  at  an  outlay  of 
mere  manual  labor,  per 
formed  at  night,  under  so 
loose  a  system  of  fencing 
as  this. 

The  plows  these  people 

,  ,  4-N  OLD   FOGY. 

use   are   simply  a   sharp 
ened  stick,  such  as  Abraham  plowed  with,  and  they  still  win 
now  their  wheat  as  he  did — they  pile  it  on  the  house-top,  and 
then  toss  it  by  shovel-fulls  into  the  air  until  the  wind  has 


446 


MAGNIFICENT     BAALBEC, 


blown  all  the  chaff  away.     They  never  invent  any  thing,  never 
learn  any  thing. 

We  had  a  fine  race,  of  a  mile,  with  an  Arab  perched  on  a 
camel.  Some  of  the  horses  were  fast,  and  made  very  good 
time,  but  the  camel  scampered  by  them  without  any  very 
great  effort.  The  yelling  and  shouting,  and  whipping  and 


RACE   WITH   CAMEL. 


galloping,  of  all  parties  interested,  made  it  an  exhilarating, 
exciting,  and  particularly  boisterous  race. 

At  eleven  o'clock,  our  eyes  fell  upon  the  walls  and  columns 
of  Baalbec,  a  noble  ruin  whose  history  is  a  sealed  book.  It 
has  stood  there  for  thousands  of  years,  the  wonder  and  admi 
ration  of  travelers ;  but  who  built  it,  or  when  it  was  built,  are 
questions  that  may  never  be  answered.  One  thing  is  very 
sure,  though.  Such  grandeur  of  design,  and  such  grace  of 
execution,  as  one  sees  in  the  temples  of  Baalbec,  have  not 


MAGNIFICENT     BAALBEC. 


447 


-- 


been  equaled  or  even  approached  in  any  work  of  men's  hands 
that  has  been  built  within  twenty  centuries  past. 

The  great  Temple  of  the  Sun,  the  Temple  of  Jupiter,  and 
several  smaller  temples,  are  clustered  together  in  the  midst  of 
one  of  these  miserable  Syrian  villages,  and  look  strangely 
enough  in  such  plebeian  company.  These  temples  are  built 
upon  massive  substructions  that  might  support  a  world,  almost; 
the  materials  used  are  blocks  of  stone  as  large  as  an  omnibus 
—very  few,  if  any  of  them,  are  smaller  than  a  carpenter's  tool 
chest — and  these  substructions  are  traversed  by  tunnels  of 
masonry  through  which  a  train  of  cars  might  pass.  With 
such  foundations  as  these,  it  is  little  wonder  that  Baalbec  has 
lasted  so  long.  The 
Temple  of  the  Sun  is 
nearly  three  hundred 
feet  long  and  one 
hundred  and  sixty  feet 
wide.  It  had  fifty- 
four  columns  around 
it,  but  only  six  are 
standing  now — the 

O 

others  lie  broken  at 
its  base,  a  confused 
and  picturesque  heap. 
The  six  columns  are 
perfect,  as  also  are 
their  bases,  Corinthian 
capitals  and  entabla 
ture — and  six  more 
shapely  columns  do 
not  exist.  The  col 
umns  and  the  entab 
lature  together  are 
ninety  feet  high — a 

^  °  TEMPLE   OP   THE   SUN,    BAALBEC. 

prodigious  altitude  for 

shafts  of  stone  to  reach,  truly — and  yet  one  only  thinks  of 

their  beauty  and  symmetry  when  looking  at  them ;  the  pillars 


448  MAGNIFICENT     BAALBEC. 

look  slender  and  delicate,  the  entablature,  with  its  elaborate 
sculpture,  looks  like  rich  stucco-work.  But  when  you  have 
gazed  aloft  till  your  eyes  are  weary,  you  glance  at  the  great 
fragments  of  pillars  among  which  you  are  standing,  and  find 
that  they  are  eight  feet  through ;  and  with  them  lie  beautiful 
capitals  apparently  as  large  as  a  small  cottage ;  and  also  single 
slabs  of  stone,  superbly  sculptured,  that  are  four  or  five  feet 
thick,  and  would  completely  cover  the  floor  of  any  ordinary 
parlor.  You  wonder  where  these  monstrous  things  came 
from,  and  it  takes  some  little  time  to  satisfy  yourself  that  the 
airy  and  graceful  fabric  that  towers  above  your  head  is  made 
up  of  their  mates.  It  seems  too  preposterous. 

The  Temple  of  Jupiter  is  a  smaller  ruin  than  the  one  I  have 
been  speaking  of,  and  yet  is  immense.  It  is  in  a  tolerable 
state  of  preservation.  One  row  of  nine  columns  stands  almost 
uninjured.  They  are  sixty -five  feet  high  and  support  a  sort  of 
porch  or  roof,  which  connects  them  with  the  roof  of  the  build 
ing.  This  porch-roof  is  composed  of  tremendous  slabs  of  stone, 
which  are  so  finely  sculptured  on  the  under  side  that  the  work 
looks  like  a  fresco  from  below.  One  or  two  of  these  slabs  had 
fallen,  and  again  I  wondered  if  the  gigantic  masses  of  carved 
stone  that  lay  about  me  were  no  larger  than  those  above  my 
head.  Within  the  temple,  the  ornamentation  was  elaborate 
and  colossal.  What  a  wonder  of  architectural  beauty  and 
grandeur  this  edifice  must  have  been  when  it  was  new  !  And 
what  a  noble  picture  it  and  its  statelier  companion,  with  the 
chaos  of  mighty  fragments  scattered  about  them,  yet  makes  in 
the  moonlight ! 

I  can  not  conceive  how  those  immense  blocks  of  stone  were 
ever  hauled  from  the  quarries,  or  how  they  were  ever  raised  to 
the  dizzy  heights  they  occupy  in  the  temples.  And  yet  these 
sculptured  blocks  are  trifles  in  size  compared  with  the  rough- 
hewn  blocks  that  form  the  wide  verandah  or  platform  which 
surrounds  the  Great  Temple,  One  stretch  of  that  platform, 
two  hundred  feet  long,  is  composed  of  blocks  of  stone  as  large, 
and  some  of  them  larger,  than  a  street-car.  They  surmount  a 
wall  about  ten  or  twelve  feet  high.  I  thought  those  were 


MAGNIFICENT     BAALBEC. 


449 


large  rocks,  but  they  sank  into  insignificance  compared  with 
those  which  formed  another  section  of  the  platform.  These 
were  three  in  number,  and  I  thought  that  each  of  them  was 


KUINS   OF   BAALBEC. 


about  as  long  as  three  street  cars  placed  end  to  end,  though  of 
course  they  are  a  third  wider  and  a  third  higher  than  a  street 
car.  Perhaps  two  railway  freight  cars  of  the  largest  pattern, 
placed  end  to  end,  might  better  represent  their  size.  In  com 
bined  length  these  three  stones  stretch  nearly  two  hundred 
feet ;  they  are  thirteen  feet  square ;  two  of  them  are  sixty-four 
feet  long  each,  and  the  third  is  sixty-nine.  They  are  built 
into  the  massive  wall  some  twenty  feet  above  the  ground. 
They  are  there,  but  how  they  got  there  is  the  question.  I 
have  seen  the  hull  of  a  steamboat  that  was  smaller  than  one 
of  those  stones.  All  these  great  walls  are  as  exact  and  shapely 
as  the  flimsy  things  we  build  of  bricks  in  these  days.  A  race 

29 


450 


WONDERFUL     STONES. 


of  gods  or  of  giants  must  have  inhabited  Baalbec  many  a  cen 
tury  ago.  Men  like  the  men  of  our  day  could  hardly  rear  such 
temples  as  these. 

We  went  to  the  quarry  from  whence  the  stones  of  Baalbec 
were  taken.  It  was  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  off,  and  down 
hill.  In  a  great  pit  lay  the  mate  of  the  largest  stone  in  the 
ruins.  It  lay  there  just  as  the  giants  of  that  old  forgotten 
time  had  left  it  when  they  were  called  hence — just  as  they  had 
left  it,  to  remain  for  thousands  of  years,  an  eloquent  rebuke 
unto  such  as  are  prone  to  think  slightingly  of  the  men  who 
lived  before  them.  Tins  enormous  block  lies  there,  squared 


=~  '( 


HEWN   STONES — IN   QUARRY. 


and  ready  for  the  builders'  hands — a  solid  mass  fourteen  feet 
by  seventeen,  and  but  a  few  inches  less  than  seventy  feet  long ! 
Two  buggies  could  be  driven  abreast  of  each  other,  on  its  sur- 


PILGRIM     FIDELITY     TO     LAW.  451 

face,  from  one  end  of  it  to  the  other,  and  leave  room  enough 
for  a  man  or  two  to  walk  on  either  side. 

One  might  swear  that  all  the  John  Smiths  and  George  Wil 
kinsons,  and  all  the  other  pitiful  nobodies  between  Kingdom 
Come  and  Baalbec  would  inscribe  their  poor  little  names  upon 
the  walls  of  Baalbec's  magnificent  ruins,  and  would  add  the 
town,  the  county  and  the  State  they  came  from — and  swear 
ing  thus,  be  infallibly  correct.  It  is  a  pity  some  great  ruin 
does  not  fall  in  and  flatten  out  some  of  these  reptiles,  and 
scare  their  kind  out  of  ever  giving  their  names  to  fame  upon 
any  walls  or  monuments  again,  forever. 

Properly,  with  the  sorry  relics  we  bestrode,  it  was  a  three 
days'  journey  to  Damascus.  It  was  necessary  that  we  should 
do  it  in  less  than  two.  It  was  necessary  because  our  three 
pilgrims  would  not  travel  on  the  Sabbath  day.  We  were  all 
perfectly  willing  to  keep  the  Sabbath  day,  but  there  are  times 
when  to  keep  the  letter  of  a  sacred  law  whose  spirit  is  righteous, 
becomes  a  sin,  and  this  was  a  case  in  point.  We  pleaded  for 
the  tired,  ill-treated  horses,  and  tried  to  show  that  their  faith 
ful  service  deserved  kindness  in  return,  and  their  hard  lot 
compassion.  But  when  did  ever  self-righteousness  know  the 
sentiment  of  pity  ?  What  were  a  few  long  hours  added  to  the 
hardships  of  some  over-taxed  brutes  when  weighed  against  the 
peril  of  those  human  souls  ?  It  was  not  the  most  promising 
party  to  travel  with  and  hope  to  gain  a  higher  veneration  for 
religion  through  the  example  of  its  devotees.  We  said  the 
Saviour  who  pitied  dumb  beasts  and  taught  that  the  ox  must 
be  rescued  from  the  mire  even  on  the  Sabbath  day,  would  not 
have  counseled  a  forced  march  like  this.  We  said  the  ulong 
trip  "  was  exhausting  and  therefore  dangerous  in  the  blistering 
heats  of  summer,  even  when  the  ordinary  days'  stages  were 
traversed,  and  if  we  persisted  in  this  hard  march,  some  of  us 
might  be  stricken  down  with  the  fevers  of  the  country  in  con 
sequence  of  it.  Nothing  could  move  the  pilgrims.  They 
must  press  on.  Men  might  die,  horses  might  die,  but  they 
must  enter  upon  holy  soil  next  week,  writh  no  Sabbath-breaking 
stain  upon  them.  Thus  they  were  willing  to  commit  a  sin 


452  PILGRIM    FIDELITY    TO     LAW. 

against  the  spirit  of  religious  law,  in  order  that  they  might 
preserve  the  letter  of  it.  It  was  not  worth  while  to  tell  them 
"  the  letter  kills."  I  am  talking  now  about  personal  friends ; 
men  whom  I  like ;  men  who  are  good  citizens ;  who  are  hon 
orable,  upright,  conscientious ;  but  whose  idea  of  the  Saviour's 
religion  seems  to  me  distorted.  They  lecture  our  shortcomings 
unsparingly,  and  every  night  they  call  us  together  and  read  to 
us  chapters  from  the  Testament  that  are  full  of  gentleness,  of 


MERCY. 


charity,  and  of  tender  mercy ;  and  then  all  the  next  day  they 
stick  to  their  saddles  clear  up  to  the  summits  of  these  rugged 
mountains,  and  clear  down  again.  Apply  the  Testament's 
gentleness,  and  charity,  and  tender  mercy  to  a  toiling,  worn 
and  weary  horse  ? — Nonsense — these  are  for  God's  human 
creatures,  not  His  dumb  ones.  What  the  pilgrims  choose  to 
do,  respect  for  their  almost  sacred  character  demands  that  I 
should  allow  to  pass — but  I  would  so  like  to  catch  any  other 
member  of  the  party  riding  his  horse  up  one  of  these  exhaust 
ing  hills  once ! 

We  have  given  the  pilgrims  a  good  many  examples  that 
might  benefit  them,  but  it  is  virtue  thrown  away.     They  have 


FOUNTAIN     OF     BAALAM'S     ASS. 


453 


never  heard  a  cross  word  out  of  our  lips  toward  each  other — 
but  they  have  quarreled  once  or  twice.  We  love  to  hear  them 
at  it,  after  they  have  been  lecturing  us.  The  very  first  thing 
they  did,  coming  ashore  at  Beirout,  was  to  quarrel  in  the  boat. 
I  have  said  I  like  them,  and  I  do  like  them — but  every  time 
they  read  me  a  scorcher  of  a  lecture  I  mean  to  talk  back  in  print. 
ISTot  content  with  doubling  the  legitimate  stages,  they 
switched  off  the  main  road 
and  went  away  out  of  the 
way  to  visit  an  absurd 
fountain  called  Figia,  be 
cause  Baalam's  ass  had 
drank  there  once.  So  we 
journeyed  on,  through  the 
terrible  hills  and  deserts 
and  the  roasting  sun,  and 
then  far  into  the  night, 
seeking  the  honored  pool 
of  Baalam's  ass,  the  patron 
saint  of  all  pilgrims  like  us. 
note-book : 


PATRON   SAINT. 


I  find  no  entry  but  this  in  my 


"  Rode  to-day,  altogether,  thirteen  hours,  through  deserts,  partly,  and  partly  over 
barren,  unsightly  hills,  and  latterly  through  wild,  rocky  scenery,  and  camped  at 
about  eleven  o'clock  at  night  on  the  banks  of  a  limpid  stream,  near  a  Syrian  village. 
Do  not  know  its  name — do  not  wish  to  know  it — want  to  go  to  bed.  Two  horses 
lame  (mine  and  Jack's)  and  the  others  worn  out.  Jack  and  I  walked  three  or  four 
miles,  over  the  hills,  and  led  the  horses.  Fun— but  of  a  mild  type." 

Twelve  or  thirteen  hours  in  the  saddle,  even  in  a  Christian 
land  and  a  Christian  climate,  and  on  a  good  horse,  is  a  tire 
some  journey ;  but  in  an  oven  like  Syria,  in  a  ragged  spoon  of 
a  saddle  that  slips  fore-and-aft,  and  "  thort-ships,"  and  every 
way,  and  on  a  horse  that  is  tired  and  lame,  and  yet  must  be 
whipped  and  spurred  with  hardly  a  moment's  cessation  all  day 
long,  till  the  blood  comes  from  his  side,  and  your  conscience 
hurts  you  every  time  you  strike,  if  you  are  half  a  man, — it  is  a 
journey  to  be  remembered  in  bitterness  of  spirit  and  execrated 
with  emphasis  for  a  liberal  division  of  a  man's  lifetime. 


OHAPTEE  XLIV. 

next  day  was  an  outrage  upon  men  and  horses  both. 
It  was  another  thirteen-hour  stretch  (including  an 
hour's  "nooning.")  It  was  over  the  barrenest  chalk-hills  and 
through  the  baldest  canons  that  even  Syria  can  show.  The 
heat  quivered  in  the  air  every  where.  In  the  canons  we  almost 
smothered  in  the  baking  atmosphere.  On  high  ground,  the 
reflection  from  the  chalk-hills  was  blinding.  It  was  cruel  to 
urge  the  crippled  horses,  but  it  had  to  be  done  in  order  to 
make  Damascus  Saturday  night.  We  saw  ancient  tombs  and 
temples  of  fanciful  architecture  carved  out  of  the  solid  rock 
high  up  in  the  face  of  precipices  above  our  heads,  but  we  had 
neither  time  nor  strength  to  climb  up  there  and  examine 
them.  The  terse  language  of  my  note-book  will  answer  for 
the  rest  of  this  day's  experiences : 

Broke  camp  at  7  A.  M.,  and  made  a  ghastly  trip  through  the  Zeb  Dana  valley 
and  the  rough  mountains — horses  limping  and  that  Arab  screech-owl  that  does 
most  of  the  singing  and  carries  the  water-skins,  always  a  thousand  miles  ahead,  of 
course,  and  no  water  to  drink — will  he  never  die  ?  Beautiful  stream  in  a  chasm, 
lined  thick  with  pomegranate,  fig,  olive  and  quince  orchards,  and  nooned  an  hour 
at  the  celebrated  Baalam's  Ass  Fountain  of  Figia,  second  in  size  in  Syria,  and  the 
coldest  water  out  of  Siberia — guide-books  do  not  say  Baalam's  ass  ever  drank  there 
— somebody  been  imposing  on  the  pilgrims,  may  be.  Bathed  in  it — Jack  and  I. 
Only  a  second — ice- water.  It  is  the  principal  source  of  the  Abana  river — only  one- 
.half  mile  down  to  where  it  joins.  Beautiful  place — giant  trees  all  around — so  shady 
;and  cool,  if  one  could  keep  awake — vast  stream  gushes  straight  out  from  under  the 
mountain  in  a  torrent.  Over  it  is  a  very  ancient  ruin,  with  no  known  history — 
supposed  to  have  been  for  the  worship  of  the  deity  of  the  fountain  or  Baalam's  ass 
or  somebody.  Wretched  nest  of  human  vermin  about  the  fountain — rags,  dirt, 
sunken  cheeks,  pallor  of  sickness,  sores,  projecting  bones,  dull,  aching  misery  in 


THE     BEAUTIFUL     CITY. 


455 


their  eyes  and  ravenous  hunger  speaking  from  every  eloquent  fibre  and  muscle 
from  head  to  foot.  How  they  sprang  upon  a  bone,  how  they  crunched  the  bread 
we  gave  them !  Such  as  these  to  swarm  about  one  and  watch  every  bite  he  takes, 
with  greedy  looks,  and  swallow  uncon 
sciously  every  time  he  swallows,  as  if  they 
half  fancied  the  precious  morsel  went 
down  their  own  throats — hurry  up  the 
caravan  I — I  never  shall  enjoy  a  meal  in 
this  distressful  country.  To  think  of  eat 
ing  three  times  every  day  under  such  cir 
cumstances  for  three  weeks  yet — it  is 
worse  punishment  than  riding  all  day  in 
the  sun.  There  are  sixteen  starving  babies 
from  one  to  six  years  old  in  the  party,  and 
their  legs  are  no  larger  than  broom  handles. 
Left  the  fountain  at  1  p.  M.  (the  fountain 
took  us  at  least  two  hours  out  of  our  way,) 
and  reached  Mahomet's  lookout  perch,  over 
Damascus,  in  time  to  get  a  good  long  look 
before  it  was  necessary  to  move  on. 
Tired?  Ask  of  the  winds  that  far  away 
with  fragments  strewed  the  sea." 


WATER   CARRIER. 


As  the  glare  of  day  mellowed  into  twilight,  we  looked  down 
upon  a  picture  which  is  celebrated  all  over  the  world.  I  think 
I  have  read  about  four  hundred  times  that  when  Mahomet  was 
a  simple  camel-driver  he  reached  this  point  and  looked  down 
upon  Damascus  for  the  first  time,  and  then  made  a  certain  re 
nowned  remark.  He  said  man  could  enter  only  one  paradise ; 
he  preferred  to  go  to  the  one  above.  So  he  sat  down  there  and 
feasted  his  eyes  upon  the  earthly  paradise  of  Damascus,  and 
then  went  away  without  entering  its  gates.  They  have  erected 
a  tower  on  the  hill  to  mark  the  spot  where  he  stood. 

Damascus  is  beautiful  from  the  mountain.  It  is  beautiful 
even  to  foreigners  accustomed  to  luxuriant  vegetation,  and  I 
can  easily  understand  how  unspeakably  beautiful  it  must  be  to 
eyes  that  are  only  used  to  the  God-forsaken  barrenness  and 
desolation  of  Syria.  I  should  think  a  Syrian  would  go  wild 
with  ecstacy  when  such  a  picture  bursts  upon  him  for  the  first 
time. 

From  his  high  perch,  one  sees  before  him  and  below  him,  a 
wall  of  dreary  mountains,  shorn  of  vegetation,  glaring  fiercely 


456  THE     BEAUTIFUL     CITY. 

in  the  sun ;  it  fences  in  a  level  desert  of  yellow  sand,  smooth 
as  velvet  and  threaded  far  away  with  fine  lines  that  stand  for 
roads,  and  dotted  with  creeping  mites  we  know  are  camel- 
trains  and  journeying  men ;  right  in  the  midst  of  the  desert 
is  spread  a  billowy  expanse  of  green  foliage ;  and  nestling  in 
its  heart  sits  the  great  white  city,  like  an  island  of  pearls  and 
opals  gleaming  out  of  a  sea  of  emeralds.  This  is  the  picture 
you  see  spread  far  below  you,  with  distance  to  soften  it,  the 
sun  to  glorify  it,  strong  contrasts  to  heighten  the  effects,  and 
over  it  and  about  it  a  drowsing  air  of  repose  to  spiritualize  it 
and  make  it  seem  rather  a  beautiful  estray  from  the  mysterious 
worlds  we  visit  in  dreams  than  a  substantial  tenant  of  our 
coarse,  dull  globe.  And  when  you  think  of  the  leagues  of 
blighted,  blasted,  sandy,  rocky,  sun-burnt,  ugly,  dreary,  infa 
mous  country  you  have  ridden  over  to  get  here,  you  think  it  is 
the  most  beautiful,  beautiful  picture,  that  ever  human  eyes 
rested  upon  in  all  the  broad  universe !  If  I  were  to  go  to 
Damascus  again,  I  would  camp  on  Mahomet's  hill  about  a 
week,  and  then  go  away.  There  is  no  need  to  go  inside  the 
walls.  The  Prophet  was  wise  without  knowing  it  when  he 
decided  not  to  go  down  into  the  paradise  of  Damascus. 

There  is  an  honored  old  tradition  that  the  immense  garden 
which  Damascus  stands  in  was  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and 
modern  writers  have  gathered  up  many  chapters  of  evidence 
tending  to  show  that  it  really  was  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and 
that  the  rivers  Pharpar  and  Abana  are  the  "  two  rivers  "  that 
watered  Adam's  Paradise.  It  may  be  so,  but  it  is  not  paradise 
now,  and  one  would  be  as  happy  outside  of  it  as  he  would  be 
likely  to  be  within.  It  is  so  crooked  and  cramped  and  dirty 
that  one  can  not  realize  that  he  is  in  the  splendid  city  he  saw 
from  the  hill-top.  The  gardens  are  hidden  by  high  mud-walls, 
and  the  paradise  is  become  a  very  sink  of  pollution  and  un- 
comeliness.  Damascus  has  plenty  of  clear,  pure  water  in  it, 
though,  and  this  is  enough,  of  itself,  to  make  an  Arab  think  it 
beautiful  and  blessed.  Water  is  scarce  in  blistered  Syria. 
We  run  railways  by  our  large  cities  in  America ;  in  Syria  they 
curve  the  roads  so  as  to  make  them  run  by  the  meagre  little 


DAMASCUS     THE     ETERNAL.  457 

puddles  they  call  "  fountains,"  and  which  are  not  found  oftener 
on  a  journey  than  every  four  hours.  But  the  "  rivers "  of 
Pharpar  and  Abana  of  Scripture  (mere  creeks,)  run  through 
Damascus,  and  so  every  house  and  every  garden  have  their 
sparkling  fountains  and  rivulets  of  water.  With  her  forest  of 
foliage  and  her  abundance  of  water,  Damascus  must  be  a 
wonder  of  wonders  to  the  Bedouin  from  the  deserts.  Damas 
cus  is  simply  an  oasis — that  is  what  it  is.  For  four  thousand 
years  its  waters  have  not  gone  dry  or  its  fertility  failed.  Now 
we  can  understand  why  the  city  has  existed  so  long.  It  could 
not  die.  •  So  long  as  its  waters  remain  to  it  away  out  there  in 
the  midst  of  that  howling  desert,  so  long  will  Damascus  live 
to  bless  the  sight  of  the  tired  and  thirsty  wayfarer. 

"  Though  old  as  history  itself,  thou  art  fresh  as  the  breath  of  spring,  blooming  as 
thine  own  rose-bud,  and  fragrant  as  thine  own  orange  flower,  0  Damascus,  pearl  of 
the  East!" 

Damascus  dates  back  anterior  to  the  days  of  Abraham,  and 
is  the  oldest  city  in  the  world.  It  was  founded  by  Uz,  the 
grandson  of  Noah.  ik  The  early  history  of  Damascus  is 
shrouded  in  the  mists  of  a  hoary  antiquity."  Leave  the 
matters  written  of  in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  the  Old 
Testament  out,  and  no  recorded  event  has  occurred  in  the 
world  but  Damascus  was  in  existence  to  receive  the  news  of 
it.  Go  back  as  far  as  you  wrill  into  the  vague  past,  there  was 
always  a  Damascus.  In  the  writings  of  every  century  for 
more  than  four  thousand  years,  its  name  has  been  mentioned 
and  its  praises  sung.  To  Damascus,  years  are  only  moments, 
decades  are  only  flitting  trifles  of  time.  She  measures  time, 
not  by  days  and  months  and  years,  but  by  the  empires  she  has 
seen  rise,  and  prosper  and  crumble  to  ruin.  She  is  a  type  of 
immortality.  She.  saw  the  foundations  of  Baalbec,  and  Thebes, 
and  Ephesus  laid ;  she  saw  these  villages  grow  into  mighty 
cities,  and  amaze  the  world  with  their  grandeur — and  she  has 
lived  to  see  them  desolate,  deserted,  and  given  over  to  the 
owls  and  the  bats.  She  saw  the  Israelitish  empire  exalted, 
and  she  saw  it  annihilated.  She  saw  Greece  rise,  and  flourish 


458  DAMASCUS     THE     ETERNAL. 

two  thousand  years,  and  die.  In  her  old  age  she  saw  Rome 
built ;  she  saw  it  overshadow  the  world  with  its  power ;  she 
saw  it  perish.  The  few  hundreds  of  years  of  Genoese  and 
Venetian  might  and  splendor  were,  to  grave  old  Damascus, 
only  a  trifling  scintillation  hardly  worth  remembering.  Da 
mascus  has  seen  all  that  has  ever  occurred  on  earth,  and  still 
she  lives.  She  has  looked  upon  the  dry  bones  of  a  thousand 
empires,  and  will  see  the  tombs  of  a  thousand  more  before  she 
dies.  Though  another  claims  the  name,  old  Damascus  is  by 
right  the  Eternal  City. 

We  reached  the  city  gates  just  at  sundown.  They  do  say 
that  one  can  get  into  any  walled  city  of  Syria,  after  night,  for 
bucksheesh,  except  Damascus.  But  Damascus,  with  its  four 
thousand  years  of  respectability  in  the  world,  has  many  old 
fogy  notions.  There  are  no  street  lamps  there,  and  the  law 
compels  all  who  go  abroad  at  night  to  carry  lanterns,  just  as 
was  the  case  in  old  days,  when  heroes  and  heroines  of  the 
Arabian  Nights  walked  the  streets  of  Damascus,  or  flew  away 
toward  Bagdad  on  enchanted  carpets. 

It  was  fairly  dark  a  few  minutes  after  we  got  within  the 
wall,  and  we  rode  long  distances  through  wonderfully  crooked 
streets,  eight  to  ten  feet  wide,  and  shut  in  on  either  side  by  the 
high  mud-walls  of  the  gardens.  At  last  we  got  to  where  lanterns 
could  be  seen  flitting  about  here  and  there,  and  knew  we  were 
in  the  midst  of  the  curious  old  city.  In  a  little  narrow  street, 
crowded  with  our  pack-mules  and  with  a  swarm  of  uncouth 
Arabs,  we  alighted,  and  through  a  kind  of  a  hole  in  the  wall 
entered  the  hotel.  We  stood  in  a  great  flagged  court,  with 
flowers  and  citron  trees  about  us,  and  a  huge  tank  in  the  centre 
that  was  receiving  the  waters  of  many  pipes.  We  crossed  the 
court  and  entered  the  rooms  prepared  to  receive  four  of  us.  In 
a  large  marble-paved  recess  between  the  two  rooms  was  a  tank 
of  clear,  cool  water,  which  was  kept  running  over  all  the  time 
by  the  streams  that  were  pouring  into  it  from  half  a  dozen 
pipes.  Nothing,  in  this  scorching,  desolate  land  could  look  so 
refreshing  as  this  pure  water  flashing  in  the  lamp-light; 
nothing  could  look  so  beautiful,  nothing  could  sound  so  deli- 


ORIENTAL     LUXURY.  459 

clous  as  this  mimic  rain  to  ears  long  unaccustomed  to  sounds 
of  such  a  nature.  Our  rooms  were  large,  comfortably  fur 
nished,  and  even  had  their  floors  clothed  with  soft,  cheerful- 
tinted  carpets.  It  was  a  pleasant  thing  to  see  a  carpet  again, 
for  if  there  is  any  thing  drearier  than  the  tomb-like,  stone- 
paved  parlors  and  bed-rooms  of  Europe  and  Asia,  I  do  not 
know  what  it  is.  They  make  one  think  of  the  grave  all  the 
time.  A  very  broad,  gaily  caparisoned  divan,  some  twelve  or 
fourteen  feet  long,  extended  across  one  side  of  each  room,  and 
opposite  were  single  beds  with  spring  mattrasses.  There  were 
great  looking-glasses  and  marble-top  tables.  All  this  luxury 
was  as  grateful  to  systems  and  senses  wrorn  out  with  an 
exhausting  day's  travel,  as  it  was  unexpected — for  one  can  not 
tell  what  to  expect  in  a  Turkish  city  of  even  a  quarter  of  a 
million  inhabitants. 

I  do  not  know,  but  I  think  they  used  that  tank  between  the 
rooms  to  draw  drinking  water  from  ;  that  did  not  occur  to  me, 
however,  until  I  had  dipped  my  baking  head  far  down  into  its 
cool  depths.  I  thought  of  it  then,  and  superb  as  the  bath  was, 
I  was  sorry  I  had  taken  it,  and  was  about  to  go  and  explain  to 
the  landlord.  But  a  finely  curled  and  scented  poodle  dog 
frisked  up  and  nipped  the  calf  of  my  leg  just  then,  and  before 
I  had  time  to  think,  I  had  soused  him  to  the  bottom  of  the 
tank,  and  when  I  saw  a  servant  coming  with  a  pitcher  I  went 
off  and  left  the  pup  trying  to  climb  out  and  not  succeeding 
very  well.  Satisfied  revenge  was  all  I  needed  to  make  me 
perfectly  happy,  and  when  I  walked  in  to  supper  that  first 
night  in  Damascus  I  was  in  that  condition.  We  lay  on  those 
divans  a  long  time,  after  supper,  smoking  narghilies  and  long- 
stemmed  chibouks,  and  talking  about  the  dreadful  ride  of  the 
day,  and  I  knew  then  what  I  had  sometimes  known  before — 
that  it  is  worth  while  to  get  tired  out,  because  one  so  enjoys 
resting  afterward. 

In  the  morning  we  sent  for  donkeys.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  we  had  to  send  for  these  things.  I  said  Damascus  was  an 
old  fossil,  and  she  is.  Any  where  else  wre  would  have  been 
assailed  by  a  clamorous  army  of  donkey-drivers,  guides, 


460 


RELIGIOUS     INTOLERANCE. 


peddlers  and  beggars — but  in  Damascus  they  so  hate  the  very 
sight  of  a  foreign  Christian  that  they  want  no  intercourse 
whatever  with  him ;  only  a  year  or  two  ago,  his  person  was 
not  always  safe  in  Damascus  streets.  It  is  the  most  fanatical 
Mohammedan  purgatory  out  of  Arabia.  Where  you  see  one 
green  turban  of  a  Hadji  elsewhere  (the  honored  sign  that  my 
lord  has  made  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,)  I  think  you  will  see  a 
dozen  in  Damascus.  The  Damascenes  are  the  ugliest,  wicked 
est  looking  villains  we  have  seen.  All  the  veiled  women  we 
had  seen  yet,  nearly,  left  their  eyes  exposed,  but  numbers  of 
these  in  Damascus  completely  hid  the  face  under  a  close-drawn 
black  veil  that  made  the  woman  look  like  a  mummy.  If  ever 
we  caught  an  eye  exposed  it  was  quickly  hidden  from  our  con 
taminating  Christian  vision  ;  the  beggars  actually  passed  us  by 
without  demanding  bucksheesh ;  the  merchants  in  the  bazaars 

did  not  hold  up  their 
goods  and  cry  out  eager 
ly,  "Hey,  John!"  or 
"  Look  this,  Howajji !" 
On  the  contrary,  they 
only  scowled  at  us  and 
said  never  a  word. 

The  narrow  streets 
swarmed  like  a  hive  with 
men  and  women  in 
strange  Oriental  cos 
tumes,  and  our  small 
donkeys  knocked  them 
right  and  left  as  we 
plowed  through  them, 
urged  on  by  the  merci 
less  donkey-boys.  These 
persecutors  run  after  the 
animals,  shouting  and 
goading  them  for  hours 
together;  they  keep  the 
donkey  in  a  gallop  always,  yet  never  get  tired  themselves  or 


STREET   CARS   OF   DAMASCUS. 


HOUSE     OF     JUDAS.  461 

fall  behind.  The  donkeys  fell  down  and  spilt  us  over  their 
heads  occasionally,  but  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  mount 
and  hurry  on  again.  We  were  banged  against  sharp  corners, 
loaded  porters,  camels,  and  citizens  generally ;  and  we  were  so 
taken  up  with  looking  out  for  collisions  and  casualties  that  we 
had  no  chance  to  look  about  us  at  all.  We  rode  half  through 
the  city  and  through  the  famous  u  street  which  is  called 
Straight "  without  seeing  any  thing,  hardly.  Our  bones  were 
nearly  knocked  out  of  joint,  we  were  wild  with  excitement, 
and  our  sides  ached  with  the  jolting  we  had  suffered.  I  do 
not  like  riding  in  the  Damascus  street-cars 

We  were  on  our  way  to  the  reputed  houses  of  Judas  and 
Ananias.  About  eighteen  or  nineteen  hundred  years  ago, 
Saul,  a  native  of  Tarsus,  was  particularly  bitter  against  the 
new  sect  called  Christians,  and  he  left  Jerusalem  and*  started 
across  the  country  on  a  furious  crusade  against  them.  He 
went  forth  "  breathing  threatenings  and  slaughter  against  the 
disciples  of  the  Lord." 

"And  as  he  journeyed,  he  came  near  Damascus,  and  suddenly  there  shined  round 
about  him  a  light  from  heaven : 

"And  he  fell  to  the  earth  and  heard  a  voice  saying  unto  him,  'Saul,  Saul,  why 
persecutest  thou  me  ?' 

"And  when  he  knew  that  it  was  Jesus  that  spoke  to  him  he  trembled,  and  was 
astonished,  and  said,  'Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do?'  " 

He  was  told  to  arise  and  go  into  the  ancient  city  and  one 
would  tell  him  what  to  do.  In  the  meantime  his  soldiers 
stood  speechless  and  awe-stricken,  for  they  heard  the  mysteri 
ous  voice  but  saw  no  man.  Saul  rose  up  and  found  that  that 
fierce  supernatural  light  had  destroyed  his  sight,  and  he  was 
blind,  so  "  they  led  him  by  the  hand  and  brought  him  to  Da 
mascus."  He  was  converted. 

Paul  lay  three  days,  blind,  in  the  house  of  Judas,  and  during 
that  time  he  neither  ate  nor  drank. 

There  came  a  voice  to  a  citizen  of  Damascus,  named  Ana 
nias,  saying,  "Arise,  and  go  into  the  street  which  is  called 
Straight,  and  inquire  at  the  house  of  Judas,  for  one  called 
Saul,  of  Tarsus ;  for  behold,  he  prayeth," 


462  THE 

Ananias  did  not  wish  to  go  at  first,  for  he  had  heard  of  Saul 
before,  and  he  had  his  doubts  about  that  style  of  a  "  chosen 
vessel "  to  preach  the  gospel  of  peace.  However,  in  obedience 
to  orders,  he  went  into  the  "  street  called  Straight "  (how  he 
ever  found  his  way  into  it,  and  after  he  did,  how  he  ever  found 
his  way  out  of  it  again,  are  mysteries  only  to  be  accounted  for 
by  the  fact  that  he  was  acting  under  Divine  inspiration.)  He 
found  Paul  and  restored  him,  and  ordained  him  a  preacher ; 
and  from  this  old  house  we  had  hunted  up  in  the  street  which 
is  miscalled  Straight,  he  had  started  out  on  that  bold  mission 
ary  career  which  he  prosecuted  till  his  death.  It  was  not  the 
house  of  the  disciple  who  sold  the  Master  for  thirty  pieces  of 
silver.  I  make  this  explanation  in  justice  to  Judas,  who  was 
a  far  different  sort  of  man  from  the  person  just  referred  to. 
A  very  different  style  of  man,  and  lived  in  a  very  good  house. 
It  is  a  pity  we  do  not  know  more  about  him. 

I  have  given,  in  the  above  paragraphs,  some  more  informa 
tion  for  people  who  will  not  read  Bible  history  until  they  are 
defrauded  into  it  by  some  such  method  as  this.  I  hope  that 
no  friend  of  progress  and  education  will  obstruct  or  interfere 
with  my  peculiar  mission. 

The  street  called  Straight  is  straighter  than  a  corkscrew,  but 
not  as  straight  as  a  rainbow.  St.  Luke  is  careful  not  to  com 
mit  himself;  he  does  not  say  it  is  the  street  which  is  straight, 
but  the  "  street  which  is  called  Straight."  It  is  a  fine  piece  of 
irony  ;  it  is  the  only  facetious  remark  in  the  Bible,  I  believe. 
AVe  traversed  the  street  called  Straight  a  good  way,  and  then 
turned  off  and  called  at  the  reputed  house  of  Ananias.  There 
is  small  question  that  a  part  of  the  original  house  is  there  still ; 
it  is  an  old  room  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  under  ground,  and  its 
masonry  is  evidently  ancient.  If  Ananias  did  not  live  there  in 
St.  Paul's  time,  somebody  else  did,  which  is  just  as  well.  I 
took  a  drink  out  of  Ananias'  well,  and  singularly  enough,  the 
water  was  just  as  fresh  as  if  the  well  had  been  dug  yesterday. 

We  went  out  toward  the  north  end  of  the  city  to  see  the 
place  where  the  disciples  let  Paul  down  over  the  Damascus 
wall  at  dead  of  night — for  he  preached  Christ  so  fearlessly 


A     CARNIVAL     OF     BLOOD.  463 

in  Damascus  that  the  people  sought  to  kill  him,  just  as  they 
would  to-day  for  the  same  offense,  and  he  had  to  escape  and 
flee  to  Jerusalem. 

Then  we  called  at  the  tomb  of  Mahomet's  children  and  at  a 
tomb  which  purported  to  be  that  of  St.  George  who  killed  the 
dragon,  and  so  on  out  to  the  hollow  place  under  a  rock  where 
Paul  liid  during  his  flight  till  his  pursuers  gave  him  up ;  and 
to  the  mausoleum  of  the  five  thousand  Christians  who  were 
massacred  in  Damascus  in  1861  by  the  Turks.  They  say 
those  narro\v  streets  ran  blood  for  several  days,  and  that  men, 
women  and  children  were  butchered  indiscriminately  and  left 
to  rot  by  hundreds  all  through  the  Christian  quarter;  they 
say,  further,  that  the  stench  was  dreadful.  All  the  Christians 
who  could  get  away  fled  from  the  city,  and  the  Mohammedans 
would  not  defile  their  hands  by  burying  the  "  infidel  dogs." 
The  thirst  for  .blood  extended  to  the  high  lands  of  Ilermon  and 
Anti-Lebanon,  and  in  a  short  time  twenty-five  thousand  more 
Christians  were  massacred  and  their  possessions  laid  waste. 
How  they  hate  a  Christian  in  Damascus  ! — and  pretty  much 
all  over  Turkeydom  as  well.  And  how  they  will  pay  for  it 
when  Russia  turns  her  guns  upon  them  again  ! 

It  is  soothing  to  the  heart  to  abuse  England  and  France  for 
interposing  to  save  the  Ottoman  Empire  from  the  destruction 
it  has  so  richly  deserved  for  a  thousand  years.  It  hurts  my 
vanity  to  see  these  pagans  refuse  to  eat  of  food  that  has  been 
cooked  for  us ;  or  to  eat  from  a  dish  we  have  eaten  from ;  or 
to  drink  from  a  goatskin  which  we  have  polluted  with  our 
Christian  lips,  except  by  filtering  the  water  through  a  rag 
which  they  put  over  the  mouth  of  it  or  through  a  sponge  !  I 
never  disliked  a  Chinaman  as  I  do  these  degraded  Turks  and 
Arabs,  and  when  Russia  is  ready  to  war  with  them  again,  I 
hope  England  and  France  will  not  find  it  good  breeding  or 
good  judgment  to  interfere. 

In  Damascus  they  think  there  are  no  such  rivers  in  all  the 
world  as  their  little  Abana  and  Pharpar.  The  Damascenes 
have  always  thought  that  way.  In  2  Kings,  chapter  v.,  Na*a- 
man  boasts  extravagantly  about  them.  That  was  three  thou- 


464 

sand  years  ago.  lie  says :  "  Are  not  Abana  and  Pliarpar, 
rivers  of  Damascus,  better  than  all  the  waters  of  Israel  ?  May 
I  not  wash  in  them  and  be  clean  ?"  But  some  of  my  readers 
have  forgotten  who  Naaman  was,  long  ago.  Naaman  was 
the  commander  of  the  Syrian  armies.  He  was  the  favor 
ite  of  the  king  and  lived  in  great  state.  "  He  was  a  mighty 
man  of  valor,  but  he  was  a  leper."  Strangely  enough,  the 
house  they  point  out  to  you  now  as  his,  has  been  turned  into  a 
leper  hospital,  and  the  inmates  expose  their  horrid  deformities 
and  hold  up  their  hands  and  beg  for  bucksheesh  when  a 
stranger  enters. 

One  can  not  appreciate  the  horror  of  this  disease  until  he 
looks  upon  it  in  all  its  ghastliness,  in  Naaman's  ancient  dwell 
ing  in  Damascus.  Bones  all  twisted  out  of  shape,  great  knots 
protruding  from  face  and  body,  joints  decaying  and  dropping 
away— -horrible ! 


CHAPTEE   XLY. 

THE  last  twenty-four  hours  we  staid  in  Damascus  I  lay 
prostrate  with  a  violent  attack  of  cholera,  or  cholera 
morbus,  and  therefore  had  a  good  chance  and  a  good  excuse  to 
lie  there  on  that  wide  divan  and  take  an  honest  rest.  I  had 
nothing  to  do  but  listen  to  the  pattering  of  the  fountains  and 
take  medicine  and  throw  it  up  again.  It  was  dangerous  recre 
ation,  but  it  was  pleasanter  than  traveling  in  Syria.  I  had 
plenty  of  snow  from  Mount  Ilermon,  and  as  it  would  not  stay 
on  my  stomach,  there  was  nothing  to  interfere  with  my  eating 
it — there  was  always  room  for  more.  I  enjoyed  myself  very 
well.  Syrian  travel  has  its  interesting  features,  like  travel  in 
any  other  part  of  the  world,  and  yet  to  break  your  leg  or  have 
the  cholera  adds  a  welcome  variety  to  it. 

"We  left  Damascus  at  noon  and  rode  across  the  plain  a 
couple  of  hours,  and  then  the  party  stopped  a  while  in  the 
shade  of  some  fig-trees  to  give  me  a  chance  to  rest.  It  was 
the  hottest  day  we  had  seen  yet — the  sun-flames  shot  down 
like  the  shafts  of  fire  that  stream  out  before  a  blow-pipe ;  the 
rays  seemed  to  fall  in  a  steady  deluge  on  the  head  and  pass 
downward  like  rain  from  a  roof.  I  imagined  I  could  distin 
guish  between  the  floods  of  rays — I  thought  I  could  tell  when 
each  flood  struck  my  head,  when  it  reached  my  shoulders,  and 
when  the  next  one  came.  It  was  terrible.  All  the  desert 
glared  so  fiercely  that  my  eyes  were  swimming  in  tears  all  the 
time.  The  boys  had  white  umbrellas  heavily  lined  with  dark 
green.  They  were  a  priceless  blessing.  I  thanked  fortune 
that  I  had  one,  too,  notwithstanding  it  was  packed  up  with 

30 


468  GEAVE     OF     NIMROD. 

recognize  the  Arab  names  or  try  to  pronounce  them.  When 
I  say  that  that  village  is  of  the  usual  style,  I  mean  to  insin 
uate  that  all  Syrian  villages  within  h'fty  miles  of  Damascus  are 
alike — so  much  alike  that  it  would  require  more  than  human 
intelligence  to  tell  wherein  one  differed  from  another.  A  Sy 
rian  village  is  a  hive  of  huts  one  story  high  (the  height  of  a 
man,)  and  as  square  as  a  dry-goods  box ;  it  is  mud-plastered 
all  over,  flat  roof  and  all,  and  generally  whitewashed  after  a 
fashion.  The  same  roof  often  extends  over  half  the  town,  cov 
ering  many  of  the  streets,  which  are  generally  about  a  yard 
wide.  When  you  ride  through  one  of  these  villages  at  noon 
day,  you  first  meet  a  melancholy  dog,  that  looks  up  at  you  and 
silently  begs  that  you  won't  run  over  him,  but  he  does  not 
offer  to  get  out  of  the  way ;  next  you  meet  a  young  boy  with 
out  any  clothes  on,  and  he  holds  out  his  hand  and  says  "  Buck- 
sheesh  !" — he  don't  really  expect  a  cent,  but  then  he  learned  to 
say  that  before  he  learned  to  say  mother,  and  now  he  can  not 
break  himself  of  it ;  next  you  meet  a  woman  with  a  black  veil 
drawn  closely  over  her  face,  and  her  bust  exposed  ;  finally,  you 
come  to  several  sore-eyed  children  and  children  in  all  stages  of 
mutilation  and  decay ;  and  sitting  humbly  in  the  dust,  and  all 
fringed  with  filthy  rags,  is  a  poor  devil  whose  arms  and  legs 
are  gnarled  and  twisted  like  grape-vines.  These  are  all  the 
people  you  are  likely  to  see.  The  balance  of  the  population 
are  asleep  within  doors,  or  abroad  tending  goats  in  the  plains 
and  on  the  hill-sides.  The  village  is  built  on  some  consumptive 
little  water-course,  and  about  it  is  a  little  fresh-looking  vege 
tation.  Beyond  this  charmed  circle,  for  miles  on  every  side, 
stretches  a  weary  desert  of  sand  and  gravel,  which  produces  a 
gray  bunchy  shrub  like  sage-brush.  A  Syrian  village  is  the 
sorriest  sight  in  the  world,  and  its  surroundings  are  eminently 
in  keeping  with  it. 

I  would  not  have  gone  into  this  dissertation  upon  Syrian 
villages  but  for  the  fact  that  ISTimrod,  the  Mighty  Hunter  of 
Scriptural  notoriety,  is  buried  in  Jonesborough,  and  I  wished 
the  public  to  know  about  how  he  is  located.  Like  Homer,  he 
is  said  to  be  buried  in  many  other  places,  but  this  is  the  only 
true  and  genuine  place  his  ashes  inhabit. 


A     STATELY    RUIN.  469 

When  the  original  tribes  were  dispersed,  more  than  four 
thousand  years  ago,  Nimrod  and  a  large  party  traveled  three 
or  four  hundred  miles,  and  settled  where  the  great  city  of 
Babylon  afterwards  stood.  Nimrod  built  that  city.  He  also 
began  to  build  the  famous  Tower  of  Babel,  but  circumstances 
over  which  he  had  no  control  put  it  out  of  his  power  to  finish 
it.  He  ran  it  up  eight  stories  high,  however,  and  two  of  them 
still  stand,  at  this  day — a  colossal  mass  of  brickwork,  rent 
down  the  centre  by  earthquakes,  and  seared  and  vitrified  by 
the  lightnings  of  an  angry  God.  But  the  vast  ruin  will  still 
stand  for  ages,  to  shame  the  puny  labors  of  these  modern  gen 
erations  of  men.  Its  huge  compartments  are  tenanted  by  owls 
and  lions,  and  old  Nimrod  lies  neglected  in  this  wretched  vil 
lage,  far  from  the  scene  of  his  grand  enterprise. 

We  left  Jonesborough  very  early  in  the  morning,  and  rode 
forever  and  forever  and  forever,  it  seemed  to  me,  over  parched 
deserts  and  rocky  hills,  hungry,  and  with  no  water  to  drink. 
We  had  drained  the  goat-skins  dry  in  a  little  while.  At  noon 
we  halted  before  the  wretched  Arab  town  of  El  Yuba  Dam, 
perched  on  the  side  of  a  mountain,  but  the  dragoman  said  if 
w^e  applied  there  for  water  we  would  be  attacked  by  the  whole 
tribe,  for  they  did  not  love  Christians.  We  had  to  journey  on. 
Two  hours  later  we  reached  the  foot  of  a  tall  isolated  moun 
tain,  which  is  crowned  by  the  crumbling  castle  of  Banias,  the 
stateliest  ruin  of  that  kind  on  earth,  no  doubt.  It  is  a  thou 
sand  feet  long  and  two  hundred  wide,  all  of  the  most  symmet 
rical,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  ponderous  masonry.  The 
massive  towers  and  bastions  are  more  than  thirty  feet  high, 
and  have  been  sixty.  From  the  mountain's  peak  its  broken 
turrets  rise  above  the  groves  of  ancient  oaks  and  olives,  and 
look  wonderfully  picturesque.  It  is  of  such  high  antiquity 
that  no  man  knows  who  built  it  or  when  it  was  built.  It  is  ut 
terly  inaccessible,  except  in  one  place,  where  a  bridle-path 
winds  upward  among  the  solid  rocks  to  the  old  portcullis. 
The  horses'  hoofs  have  bored  holes  in  these  rocks  to  the  depth 
of  six  inches  during  the  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  years  that 
the  castle  was  garrisoned.  We  wrandered  for  three  hours 

• 


470  ENTERING     HOLY     LAND. 

among  the  chambers  and  crypts  and  dungeons  of  the  fortress, 
and  trod  where  the  mailed  heels  of  many  a  knightly  Crusader 
had  rang,  and  where  Phenician  heroes  had  walked  ages  before 
them. 

We  wondered  how  such  a  solid  mass  of  masonry  could  be 
affected  even  by  an  earthquake,  and  could  not  understand 
what  agency  had  made  Banias  a  ruin ;  but  we  found  the  de 
stroyer,  after  a  while,  and  then  our  wonder  was  increased  ten 
fold.  Seeds  had  fallen  in  crevices  in  the  vast  walls ;  the  seeds 
had  sprouted  ;  the  tender,  insignificant  sprouts  had  hardened  ; 
they  grew  larger  and  larger,  and  by  a  steady,  imperceptible 
pressure  forced  the  great  stones  apart,  and  now  are  bringing 
sure  destruction  upon  a  giant  work  that  has  even  mocked  the 
earthquakes  to  scorn  !  Gnarled  and  twisted  trees  spring  from 
the  old  walls  every  where,  and  beautify  and  overshadow  the 
gray  battlements  with  a  wrild  luxuriance  of  foliage. 

From  these  old  towers  we  looked  down  upon  a  broad,  far- 
reaching  green  plain,  glittering  with  the  pools  and  rivulets 
which  are  the  sources  of  the  sacred  river  Jordan.  It  was  a 
grateful  vision,  after  so  much  desert. 

And  as  the  evening  drew  near,  we  clambered  down  the 
mountain,  through  groves  of  the  Biblical  oaks  of  Bashan,  (for 
we  were  just  stepping  over  the  border  and  entering  the  long- 
sought  Holy  Land,)  and  at  its  extreme  foot,  toward  the  wide 
valley,  we  entered  this  little  execrable  village  of  Banias  and 
camped  in  a  great  grove  of  olive  trees  near  a  torrent  of  spark 
ling  water  whose  banks  are  arrayed  in  fig-trees,  pomegranates 
and  oleanders  in  full  leaf.  Barring  the  proximity  of  the  vil 
lage,  it  is  a  sort  of  paradise. 

The  very  first  thing  one  feels  like  doing  when  he  gets  into 
camp,  all  burning  up  and  dusty,  is  to  hunt  up  a  bath.  We 
followed  the  stream  up  to  where  it  gushes  out  of  the  mountain 
side,  three  hundred  yards  from  the  tents,  and  took  a  bath  that 
was  so  icy  that  if  I  did  not  know  this  was  the  main  source  of 
the  sacred  river,  I  would  expect  harm  to  come  of  it.  It  was 
bathing  at  noonday  in  the  chilly  source  of  the  Abana,  "  Eiver 
of  Damascus,"  that  gave  me  the  cholera,  so  Dr.  B.  said.  How 
ever,  it  generally  does  give  me  the  cholera  to  take-p  bath. 


BIRTHPLACE     OF     CHURCH     OF     ROME.  471 

The  incorrigible  pilgrims  have  come  in  with  their  pockets 
full  of  specimens  broken  from  the  ruins.  I  wish  this  vandal 
ism  could  be  stopped.  They  broke  off  fragments  from  Noah's 
tomb  ;  from  the  exquisite  sculptures  of  the  temples  of  Baalbec; 
from  the  houses  of  Judas  and  Ananias,  in  Damascus  ;  from 
the  tomb  of  Nimrod  the  Mighty  Hunter  in  Jonesborough  ; 
from  the  worn  Greek  and  Roman  inscriptions  set  in  the  hoary 
walls  of  the  Castle  of  Banias  ;  and  now  they  have  been  hack 
ing  and  chipping  these  old  arches  here  that  Jesus  looked  upon 
in  the  flesh.  Heaven  protect  the  Sepulchre  when  this  tribe 
invades  Jerusalem ! 

The  ruins  here  are  not  very  interesting.  There  are  the 
massive  walls  of  a  great  square  building  that  was  once  the  cit 
adel  ;  there  are  many  ponderous  old  arches  that  are  so  smoth 
ered  with  debris  that  they  barely  project  above  the  ground ; 
there  are  heavy-walled  sewers  through  which  the  crystal  brook 
of  which  Jordan  is  born  still  runs  ;  in  the  hill-side  are  the  sub 
structions  of  a  costly  marble  temple  that  Herod  the  Great 
built  here — patches  of  its  handsome  mosaic  floors  still  remain ; 
there  is  a  quaint  old  stone  bridge  that  was  here  before  Herod's 
time,  may  be ;  scattered  every  where,  in  the  paths  and  in  the 
woods,  are  Corinthian  capitals,  broken  porphyry  pillars,  and 
little  fragments  of  sculpture ;  and  up  yonder  in  the  precipice 
where  the  fountain  gushes  out,  are  well-worn  Greek  inscrip 
tions  over  niches  in  the  rock  where  in  ancient  times  the  Greeks, 
and  after  them  the  Romans,  worshipped  the  sylvan  god  Pan. 
But  trees  and  bushes  grow  above  many  of  these  ruins  now  ; 
the  miserable  huts  of  a  little  crew  of  filthy  Arabs  are  perched 
upon  the  broken  masonry  of  antiquity,  the  whole  place  has  a 
sleepy,  stupid,  rural  look  about  it,  and  one  can  hardly  bring 
himself  to  believe  that  a  busy,  substantially  built  city  once  ex 
isted  here,  even  two  thousand  years  ago.  The  place  was  nev 
ertheless  the  scene  of  an  event  whose  effects  have  added  page 
after  page  and  volume  after  volume  to  the  world's  history. 
For  in  this  place  Christ  stood  when  he  said  to  Peter : 

"Thou  art  Peter;  and  upon  this  rock  will  I  build  my  church,  and  the  gates  of 
hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it.  And  I  will  give  unto  thee  the  keys  of  the  King- 


472  ON     HOLY    GROUND. 

dom  of  Heaven ;  and  whatsoever   thou   shalt  bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in 
heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  loose  on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven." 

On  those  little  sentences  have  been  built  up  the  mighty  edi 
fice  of  the  Church  of  Home  ;  in  them  lie  the  authority  for  the 
imperial  power  of  the  Popes  over  temporal  affairs,  and  their 
godlike  power  to  curse  a  soul  or  wash  it  white  from  sin.  To 
sustain  the  position  of  "  the  only  true  Church,"  which  Rome 
claims  was  thus  conferred  upon  her,  she  has  fought  and  labored 
and  struggled  for  many  a  century,  and  will  continue  to  keep 
herself  busy  in  the  same  work  to  the  end  of  time.  The  mem 
orable  words  I  have  quoted  give  to  this  ruined  city  about  all 
the  interest  it  possesses  to  people  of  the  present  day. 

It  seems  curious  enough  to  us  to  be  standing  on  ground  that 
was  once  actually  pressed  by  the  feet  of  the  Saviour.  The 
situation  is  suggestive  of  a  reality  and  a,  tangibility  that  seem 
at  variance  with  the  vagueness  and  mystery  and  ghostliness 
that  one  naturally  attaches  to  the  character  of  a  god.  I  can 
not  comprehend  yet  that  I  am  sitting  where  a  god  has  stood, 
and  looking  upon  the  brook  and  the  mountains  which  that  god 
looked  upon,  and  am  surrounded  by  dusky  men  and  women 
whose  ancestors  saw  him,  and  even  talked  with  him,  face  to 
face,  and  carelessly,  just  as  they  would  have  done  with  any 
other  stranger.  I  can  not  comprehend  this ;  the  gods  of  my 
understanding  have  been  always  hidden  in  clouds  and  very  far 
away. 

This  morning,  during  breakfast,  the  usual  assemblage  of 
squalid  humanity  sat  patiently  without  the  charmed  circle  of 
the  camp  and  waited  for  such  crumbs  as  pity  might  bestow 
upon  their  misery.  There  were  old  and  young,  brown-skinned 
and  yellow.  Some  of  the  men  were  tall  and  stalwart,  (for  one 
hardly  sees  any  where  such  splendid-looking  men  as  here  in  the 
East,)  but  all  the  women  and  children  looked  worn  and  sad, 
and  distressed  with  hunger.  They  reminded  me  much  of  In 
dians,  did  these  people.  They  had  but  little  clothing,  but  such 
as  they  had  was  fanciful  in  character  and  fantastic  in  its  ar 
rangement.  Any  little  absurd  gewgaw  or  gimcrack  they  had 
they  disposed  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  attract  attention 


PECULIARITIES.  473 

most  readily.  They  sat  in  silence,  and  with  tireless  patience 
watched  our  every  motion  with  that  vile,  uncomplaining  impo 
liteness  which  is  so  truly  Indian,  and  which  makes  a  white 
man  so  nervous  and  uncomfortable  and  savage  that  he  wants 
to  exterminate  the  whole  tribe. 

These  people  about  us  had  other  peculiarities,  which  I  have 
noticed  in  the  noble  red  man,  too :  they  were  infested  with 
vermin,  and  the  dirt  had  caked  on  them  till  it  amounted  to 
bark. 

The  little  children  were  in  a  pitiable  condition — they  all  had 
sore  eyes,  and  were  otherwise  afflicted  in  various  ways.  They 
say  that  hardly  a  native  child  in  all  the  East  is  free  from  sore 
eyes,  and  that  thousands  of  them  go  blind  of  one  eye  or  both 
every  year.  I  think  this  must  be  so,  for  I  see  plenty  of  blind 
people  every  day,  and  I  do  not  remember  seeing  any  children 
that  hadn't  sore  eyes.  And,  would  you  suppose  that  an  Amer 
ican  mother  could  sit  for  an  hour,  with  her  child  in  her  arms, 
and  let  a  hundred  flies  roost  upon  its  eyes  all  that  time  undis 
turbed?  I  see  that  every  day.  It  makes  my  flesh  creep. 
Yesterday  we  met  a  woman  riding  on  a  little  jackass,  and  she 
had  a  little  child  in  her  arms ;  honestly,  I  thought  the  child 
had  goggles  on  as  we  approached,  and  I  wondered  how  its 
mother  could  afford  so  much  style.  But  when  we  drew  near, 
we  saw  that  the  goggles  were  nothing  but  a  camp  meeting  of 
flies  assembled  around  each  of  the  child's  eyes,  and  at  the 
same  time  there  was  a  detachment  prospecting  its  nose.  The 
flies  were  happy,  the  child  was  contented,  and  so  the  mother 
did  not  interfere. 

As  soon  as  the  tribe  found  out  that  we  had  a  doctor  in  our 
party,  they  began  to  flock  in  from  all  quarters.  Dr.  B.,  in  the 
charity  of  his  nature,  had  taken  a  child  from  a  woman  who 
sat  near  by,  and  put  some  sort  of  a  wash  upon  its  diseased 
eyes.  That  woman  went  oft*  and  started  the  whole  nation,  and 
it  was  a  sight  to  see  them  swarm  !  The  lame,  the  halt,  the 
blind,  the  leprous — all  the  distempers  that  are  bred  of  indo 
lence,  dirt,  and  iniquity — wereVepresented  in  the  Congress  in 
ten  minutes,  and  still  they  came !  Every  woman  that  had  a 


HEALING     THE     SICK. 


sick  baby  brought  it  along,  and  every  woman  that  hadn't,  bor 
rowed  one.  What  reverent  and  what  worshiping  looks  they 
bent  upon  that  dread,  mysterious  power,  the  Doctor  !  They 
watched  him  take  his  phials  out ;  they  watched  him  measure 
the  particles  of  white  powder ;  they  watched  him  add  drops 
of  one  precious  liquid,  and  drops  of  another ;  they  lost  not  the 
slightest  movement ;  their  eyes  were  riveted  upon  him  with  a 


IMPROMPTU    HOSPITAL. 


fascination  that  nothing  could  distract.  I  believe  they  thought 
he  was  gifted  like  a  god.  When  each  individual  got  his  por 
tion  of  medicine,  his  eyes  were  radiant  with  joy — notwith 
standing  by  nature  they  are  a  thankless  and  impassive  race — 
and  upon  his  face  was  written  the  unquestioning  faith  that 
nothing  on  earth  could  prevent  the  patient  from  getting  well 
now. 

Christ  knew  how  to  preach  to  these  simple,  superstitious, 
disease-tortured  creatures  :  He  healed  the  sick.  They  flocked 
to  our  poor  human  doctor  this  morning  when  the  fame  of  what 
he  had  done  to  the  sick  chilft  went  abroad  in  the  land,  and 
they  worshiped  him  with  their  eyes  while  they  did  not  know 


THE     PRINCESS.  475 

as  yet  whether  there  was  virtue  in  his  simples  or  not.  The 
ancestors  of  these — people  precisely  like  them  in  color,  dress, 
manners,  customs,  simplicity — flocked  in  vast  multitudes  after 
Christ,  and  when  they  saw  Him  make  the  afflicted  whole  with 
a  word,  it  is  no  wonder  they  worshiped  Him.  No  wonder 
His  deeds  were  the  talk  of  the  nation.  No  wonder  the  multi 
tude  that  followed  Him  was  so  great  that  at  one  time — thirty 
miles  from  here — they  had  to  let  a  sick  man  down  through  the 
roof  because  no  approach  could  be  made  to  the  door;  no  won 
der  His  audiences  were  so  great  at  Galilee  that  He  had  to 
preach  from  a  ship  removed  a  little  distance  from  the  shore  ; 
no  wonder  that  even  in  the  desert  places  about  Bethsaida,  five 
thousand  invaded  His  solitude,  and  He  had  to  feed  them  by  a 
miracle  or  else  see  them  suffer  for  their  confiding  faith  and  de 
votion  ;  no  wonder  when  there  was  a  great  commotion  in  a 
city  in  those  days,  one  neighbor  explained  it  to  another  in 
words  to  this  eftect :  "  They  say  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is 
come !" 

Well,  as  I  was  saying,  the  doctor  distributed  medicine  as 
long  as  he  had  any  to  distribute,  and  his  reputation  is  mighty 
in  Galilee  this  day.  Among  his  patients  was  the  child  of  the 
Shiek's  daughter — for  even  this  poor,  ragged  handful  of  sores 
and  sin  has  its  royal  Shiek — a  poor  old  mummy  that  looked  as 
if  he  would  be  more  at  home  in  a  poor-house  than  in  the  Chief 
Magistracy  of  this  tribe  of  hopeless,  shirtless  savages.  The 
princess — I  mean  the  Shiek's  daughter — was  only  thirteen  or 
fourteen  years  old,  and  had  a  very  sweet  face  and  a  pretty  one.- 
She  was  the  only  Syrian  female  we  have  seen  yet  who  was  not 
so  sinfully  ugly  that  she  couldn't  smile  after  ten  o'clock  Satur 
day  night  without  breaking  the  Sabbath.  Her  child  was  a 
hard  specimen,  though — there  wasn't  enough  of  it  to  mjike  a 
pie,  and  the  poor  little  thing  looked  so  pleadingly  up  at  all 
who  came  near  it  (as  if  it  had  an  idea  that  now  was  its  chance 
or  never,)  that  we  were  filled  with  compassion  which  was  gen 
uine  and  not  put  on. 

But  this  last  new  horse  I  have  got  is  trying  to  break  his 
neck  over  the  tent-ropes,  and  I  shall  have  to  go  out  and  anchor 


476 


A    NOBLE     RUIN. 


him.     Jericho  and  I  have  parted  company.     The  new  horse  is 
not  much  to  boast  of,  I  think.     One  of  his  hind  legs  bends  the 
wrong  way,  and  the  other  one  is  as  straight  and  stiff  as  a  tent- 
pole.     Most 
of  his  teeth 


THE  HOUSE    "BAALBEC." 


are 

and  he  is  as 
blind  as  a 
bat.  His 
nose  has 
been  broken 
at  some  time 
or  other,  and 
is  arched 
like  a  cul 
now. 
under 
hangs 


vert 
His 
lip 


down  like  a  camel's,  and  his  ears  are  chopped  off  close  to  his 
head.  I  had  some  trouble  at  first  to  find  a  name  for  him,  but 
I  finally  concluded  to  call  him  Baalbec,  because  he  is  such  a 
magnificent  ruin.  I  can  not  keep  from  talking  about  my 
horses,  because  I  have  a  very  long  and  tedious  journey  before 
me,  and  they  naturally  occupy  my  thoughts  about  as  much  as 
matters  of  apparently  much  greater  importance. 

We  satisfied  our  pilgrims  by  making  those  hard  rides  from 
•Baalbec  to  Damascus,  but  Dan's  horse  and  Jack's  were  so  crip 
pled  we  had  to  leave  them  behind  and  get  fresh  animals  for 
them.  The  dragoman  says  Jack's  horse  died.  I  swapped 
horses  with  Mohammed,  the  kingly-looking  Egyptian  who  is 
our  Ferguson's  lieutenant.  By  Ferguson  I  mean  our  dragoman 
Abraham,  of  course.  I  did  not  take  this  horse  on  account  of 
his  personal  appearance,  but  because  I  have  not  seen  his  back. 
I  do  riot  wish  to  see  it.  I  have  seen  the  backs  of  all  the  other 
horses,  and  found  most  of  them  covered  with  dreadful  saddle- 
boils  which  I  know  have  not  been  washed  or  doctored  for 
years.  The  idea  of  riding  all  day  long  over  such  ghastly  in- 


MORE     SENTIMENTAL     BOSH.  477 

quisitions  of  torture  is  sickening.  My  horse  must  be  like  the 
others,  but  I  have  at  least  the  consolation  of  not  knowing  it 
to  be  so. 

I  hope  that  in  future  I  may  be  spared  any  more  sentimental 
praises  of  the  Arab's  idolatry  of  his  horse.  In  boyhood  I 
longed  to  be  an  Arab  of  the  desert  and  have  a  beautiful  mare, 
and  call  her  Selim  or  Benjamin  or  Mohammed,  and  feed  her 
with  my  own  hands,  and  let  her  come  into  the  tent,  and  teach 
her  to  caress  me  and  look  fondly  upon  me  with  her  great  ten 
der  eyes  ;  and  I  wished  that  a  stranger  might  come  at  such  a 
time  and  offer  me  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  her,  so  that 
I  could  do  like  the  other  Arabs — hesitate,  yearn  for  the  money, 
but  overcome  by  my  love  for  my  mare,  at  last  say,  "  Part  with 
thee,  my  beautiful  one !  Never  with  my  life !  Away,  tempt 
er,  I  scorn  thy  gold  !"  and  then  bound  into  the  saddle  and 
speed  over  the  desert  like  the  wind  ! 

But  I  recall  those  aspirations.  If  these  Arabs  be  like  the 
other  Arabs,  their  love  for  their  beautiful  mares  is  a  fraud. 
These  of  my  acquaintance  have  no  love  for  their  horses,  no 
sentiment  of  pity  for  them,  and  no  knowledge  of  how  to  treat 
them  or  care  for  them.  The  Syrian  saddle-blanket  is  a  quilted 
mattrass  two  or  three  inches  thick.  It  is  never  removed  from 
the  horse,  day  or  night.  It  gets  full  of  dirt  and  hair,  and  be 
comes  soaked  with  sweat.  It  is  bound  to  breed  sores.  These 
pirates  never  think  of  washing  a  horse's  back.  They  do  not 
shelter  the  horses  in  the  tents,  either ;  they  must  stay  out  and 
take  the  weather  as  it  comes.  Look  at  poor  cropped  and  dilapr 
idated  "  Baalbec,"  and  weep  for  the  sentiment  that  has  been 
wasted  upon  the  Selims  of  romance ! 


OHAPTEE  XLVI. 

A  BOUT  an  hour's  ride  over  a  rough,  rocky  road,  half 
-£j-  flooded  with  water,  and  through  a  forest  of  oaks  of 
Bashan,  brought  us  to  Dan. 

From  a  little  mound  here  in  the  plain  issues  a  broad  stream 
of  limpid  water  and  forms  a  large  shallow  pool,  and  then 
rushes  furiously  onward,  augmented  in  volume.  This  puddle 
is  an  important  source  of  the  Jordan.  Its  banks,  and  those  of 
the  brook  are  respectably  adorned  with  blooming  oleanders, 
but  the  unutterable  beauty  of  the  spot  will  not  throw  a  well- 
balanced  man  into  convulsions,  as  the  Syrian  books  of  travel 
would  lead  one  to  suppose. 

From  the  spot  I  am  speaking  of,  a  cannon-ball  would  carry 
beyond  the  confines  of  Holy  Land  and  light  upon  profane 
ground  three  miles  away.  We  were  only  one  little  hour's 
travel  within  the  borders  of  Holy  Land — we  had  hardly  begun 
to  appreciate  yet  that  we  were  standing  upon  any  different 
sort  of  earth  than  that  we  had  always  been  used  to,  and  yet 
see  how  the  historic  names  began  already  to  cluster !  Dan — 
Bashan — Lake  Huleh — the  Sources  of  Jordan — the  Sea  of 
Galilee.  They  were  all  in  sight  but  the  last,  and  it  was  not 
far  away.  The  little  township  of  Bashan  was  once  the  kingdom 
so  famous  in  Scripture  for  its  bulls  and  its  oaks.  Lake  Huleh 
is  the  Biblical  "  Waters  of  Merom."  Dan  was  the  northern 
and  Beersheba  the  southern  limit  of  Palestine — hence  the 
expression  "  from  Dan  to  Beersheba."  It  is  equivalent  to  our 
phrases  "  from  Maine  to  Texas " — "  from  Baltimore  to  San 
Francisco."  Our  expression  and  that  of  the  Israelites  both 


SMALLNESS     OF     PALESTINE. 


479 


OAK   OF  BASHAN. 


mean  the  same — great  distance.  With  their  slow  camels  and 
asses,  it  was  about  a  seven  days'  journey  from  Dan  to  Beer- 
sheba — say  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  sixty  miles — it  was  the 
entire  length 
of  their  coun 
try,  and  was 
not  to  be  un- 
dertaken 
without  great 
preparation 
and  much  cer 
emony.  When 
the  Prodigal 
traveled  to  "  a 
far  country," 
it  is  not  likely 
that  he  went 
more  than 

eighty  or  ninety  miles.  Palestine  is  only  from  forty  to  sixty 
miles  wide.  The  State  of  Missouri  could  be  split  into  three 
Palestines,  and  there  would  then  be  enough  material  left  for 
part  of  another — possibly  a  whole  one.  From  Baltimore  to 
San  Francisco  is  several  thousand  miles,  but  it  will  be  only  a 
seven  days'  journey  in  the  cars  when  I  am  two  or  three  years 
older.*  If  I  live  I  shall  necessarily  have  to  go  across  the  con 
tinent  every  now  and  then  in  those  cars,  but  one  journey  from 
Dan  to  Beerslteba  will  be  sufficient,  no  doubt.  It  must  be  the 
most  trying  of  the  two.  Therefore,  if  we  chance  to  discover 
that  from  Dan  to  Beersheba  seemed  a  mighty  stretch  of  coun 
try  to  the  Israelites,  let  us  not  be  airy  with  them,  but  reflect 
that  it  ivas  and  is  a  mighty  stretch  when  one  can  not  traverse 
it  by  rail. 

The  small  mound  I  have  mentioned  a  while  ago  was  once 
occupied  by  the  Phenician  city  of  Laish.  A  party  of  filibus 
ters  from  Zorah  and  Eschol  captured  the  place,  and  lived  there 


*  The  railroad  has  been  completed,  since  the  above  was  written. 


480  REMINISCENCE     OF    LOT. 

in  a  free  and  easy  way,  worshiping  gods  of  their  own  manu 
facture  and  stealing  idols  from  their  neighbors  whenever  they 
wore  their  own  out.  Jeroboam  set  up  a  golden  calf  here  to 
fascinate  his  people  and  keep  them  from  making  dangerous 
trips  to  Jerusalem  to  worship,  which  might  result  in  a  return  to 
their  rightful  allegiance.  With  all  respect  for  those  ancient 
Israelites,  I  can  not  overlook  the  fact  that  they  were  not 
always  virtuous  enough  to  withstand  the  seductions  of  a 
golden  calf.  Human  nature  has  not  changed  much  since 
then. 

Some  forty  centuries  ago  the  city  of  Sodom  was  pillaged  by 
the  Arab  princes  of  Mesopotamia,  and  among  other  prisoners 
they  seized  upon  the  patriarch  Lot  and  brought  him  here  on 
their  way  to  their  own  possessions.  They  brought  him  to 
Dan,  and  father  Abraham,  who  was  pursuing  them,  crept 
softly  in  at  dead  of  night,  among  the  whispering  oleanders 
and  under  the  shadows  of  the  stately  oaks,  and  fell  upon  the 
slumbering  victors  and  startled  them  from  their  dreams  with 
the  clash  of  steel.  He  recaptured  Lot  and  all  the  other 
plunder. 

We  moved  on.  We  wTere  now  in  a  green  valley,  five  or  six 
miles  wide  and  fifteen  long.  The  streams  which  are  called 
the  sources  of  the  Jordan  flow  through  it  to  Lake  Huleh,  a 
shallow  pond  three  miles  in  diameter,  and  from  the  southern 
extremity  of  the  Lake  the  concentrated  Jordan  flows  out. 
The  Lake  is  surrounded  by  a  broad  marsh,  grown  with  reeds. 
Between  the  marsh  and  the  mountains  which  wall  the  valley 
is  a  respectable  strip  of  fertile  land ;  at  the  end  of  the  valley, 
toward  Dan,  as  much  as  half  the  land  is  solid  and  fertile,  and 
watered  by  Jordan's  sources.  There  is  enough  of  it  to  make  a 
farm.  It  almost  warrants  the  enthusiasm  of  the  spies  of  that 
rabble  of  adventurers  who  captured  Dan.  They  said  :  "  We 
have  seen  the  land,  and  behold  it  is  very  good.  *  *  *  A 
place  where  there  is  no  want  of  any  thing  that  is  in  the 
earth." 

Their  enthusiasm  was  at  least  warranted  by  the  fact  that 
they  had  never  seen  a  country  as  good  as  this.  There  was 


JOSEPH     RESURRECTED.  481 

enough  of  it  for  the  ample  support  of  their  six  hundred  men 
and  their  families,  too. 

When  we  got  fairly  down  on  the  level  part  of  the  Danite 
farm,  we  came  to  places  where  we  could  actually  run  our 
horses.  It  was  a  notable  circumstance. 

We  had  been  painfully  clambering  over  interminable  hills 
and  rocks  for  days  together,  and  when  we  suddenly  came 
upon  this  astonishing  piece  of  reckless  plain,  every  man  drove 
the  spurs  into  his  horse  and  sped  away  with  a  velocity  he 
could  surely  enjoy  to  the  utmost,  but  could  never  hope  to 
comprehend  in  Syria. 

Here  were  evidences  of  cultivation — a  rare  sight  in  this 
country — an  acre  or  two  of  rich  soil  studded  with  last  season's 
dead  corn-stalks  of  the  thickness  of  your  thumb  and  very  wide 
apart.  But  in  such  a  land  it  was  a  thrilling  spectacle.  Close 
to  it  was  a  stream,  and  on  its  banks  a  great  herd  of  curious- 
looking  Syrian  goats  and  sheep  were  gratefully  eating  gravel. 
I  do  not  state  this  as  a  petrified  fact — I  only  suppose  they  were 
eating  gravel,  because  there  did  not  appear  to  be  any  thing 
else  'for  them  to  eat.  The  shepherds  that  tended  them  were 
the  very  pictures  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren  I  have  no  doubt 
in  the  world.  They  were  tall,  muscular,  and  very  dark- 
skinned  Bedouins,  with  inky  black  beards.  They  had  firm 
lips,  unquailing  eyes,  and  a  kingly  stateliness  of  bearing. 
They  wore  the  parti-colored  half  bonnet,  half  hood,  with 
fringed  ends  falling  upon  their  shoulders,  and  the  full,  flowing 
robe  barred  with  broad  black  stripes — the  dress  one  sees  in  all 
pictures  of  the  swarthy  sons  of  the  desert.  These  chaps  would 
sell  their  younger  brothers  if  they  had  a  chance,  I  think. 
They  have  the  manners,  the  customs,  the  dress,  the  occupation 
and  the  loose  principles  of  the  ancient  stock.  [They  attacked 
our  camp  last  night,  and  I  bear  them  no  good  will.]  They 
had  with  them  the  pigmy  jackasses  one  sees  all  over  Syria  and 
remembers  in  all  pictures  of  the  "  Flight  into  Egypt,"  where 
Mary  and  the  Young  Child  are  riding  and  Joseph  is  walking 
alongside,  towering  high  above  the  little  donkey's  shoulders. 

But  really,  here  the  man  rides  and  carries  the  child,  as  a 

31 


482 


A     WEARY     LAND. 


general  thing,  and  the  woman  walks.  The  customs  have  not 
changed  since  Joseph's  time.  We  would  not  have  in  our 
houses  a  picture  representing  Joseph  riding  and  Mary  walk 
ing  ;  we  would  see  profanation  in  it,  but  a  Syrian  Christian 
would  not.  I  know  that  hereafter  the  picture  I  first  spoke  of 
will  look  odd  to  me. 

We  could  not  stop  to  rest  two  or  three  hours  out  from  our 
camp,  of  course,  albeit  the  brook  was  beside  us.  So  we  went 
on  an  hour  longer.  We  saw  water,  then,  but  nowhere  in  all 
the  waste  around  was  there  a  foot  of  shade,  and  we  were 
scorching  to  death.  "  Like  unto  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock 
in  a  weary  land."  Nothing  in  the  Bible  is  more  beautiful 
than  that,  and  surely  there  is  no  place  we  have  wandered  to 
that  is  able  to  give  it  such  touching  expression  as  this  blister 
ing,  naked,  treeless  land. 

Here  you  do  not  stop  just  when  you  please,  but  when  you 

can.  We  found  water,  but  no 
shade.  We  traveled  on  and  found 
a  tree  at  last,  but  no  water.  We 
rested  and  lunched,  and  came  on 
to  this  place,  Ain  Mellahah  (the 
boys  call  it  Baldwinsville.)  It 
was  a  very  short  day's  run,  but 
the  dragoman  does  not  want  to 
go  further,  and  has  invented  a 
plausible  lie  about  the  country 
beyond  this  being  infested  by  fe 
rocious  Arabs,  who  would  make 
sleeping  in  their  midst  a  danger 
ous  pastime.  Well,  they  ought 
to  be  dangerous.  They  carry  a 
rusty  old  weather-beaten  flint 
lock  gun,  with  a  barrel  that  is 
longer  than  themselves ;  it  has  no  sights  on  it ;  it  will  not 
carry  farther  than  a  brickbat,  and  is  not  half  so  certain.  And 
the  great  sash  they  wear  in  many  a  fold  around  their  waists 
has  two  or  three  absurd  old  horse-pistols  in  it  that  are  rusty 


DANGEROUS   ARAB. 


MR.    GRIMES'   BEDOUINS. 


483 


from  eternal  disuse — weapons  that  would  hang  fire  just  about 
long  enough  for  you  to  walk  out  of  range,  and  then  burst  and 
blow  the  Arab's  head  off.  Exceedingly  dangerous  these  sons 
of  the  desert  are. 

It  used  to  make  my  blood  run  cold  to  read  Win.  C.  Grimes' 
hairbreadth  escapes  from  Bedouins,  but  I  think  I  could  read 
them  now  without  a  tremor.  He  never  said  he  was  attacked 
by  Bedouins,  I  believe,  or  was  ever  treated  uncivilly,  but  then 
in  about  every  other  chapter  lie  discovered  them  approaching, 
any  how,  and  he  had  a  blood-curdling  fashion  of  working  up 
the  peril ;  and  of  wondering  how  his  relations  far  away  would 
feel  could  they  see  their  poor  wandering  boy,  with  his  weary 
feet  and  his  dim  eyes,  in  such  fearful  danger ;  and  of  thinking 
for  the  last  time  of  the  old  homestead,  and  the  dear  old  church, 
and  the  cow,  and  those  things  ;  and  of  finally  straightening  his 


GRIMES   ON   THE   WAR   PATH. 


form  to  its  utmost  height  in  the  saddle,  drawing  his  trusty 
revolver,  and  then  dashing  the  spurs  into  "  Mohammed  "  and 
sweeping  down  upon  the  ferocious  enemy  determined  to  sell 
his  life  as  dearly  as  possible.  True  the  Bedouins  never  did 
any  thing  to  him  when  he  arrived,  and  never  had  any  intention 
of  doing  any  thing  to  him  in  the  first  place,  and  wondered 


484  MEMORIES     OF    JOSHUA. 

what  in  the  mischief  he  was  making  all  that  to-do  about ;  but 
still  I  could  not  divest  myself  of  the  idea,  somehow,  that  a 
frightful  peril  had  been  escaped  through  that  man's  dare-devil 
bravery,  and  so  I  never  could  read  about  Win.  0.  Grimes' 
Bedouins  and  sleep  comfortably  afterward.  But  I  believe  the 
Bedouins  to  be  a  fraud,  now.  I  have  seen  the  monster,  and  I 
can  outrun  him.  I  shall  never  be  afraid  of  his  daring  to  stand 
behind  his  own  gun  and  discharge  it. 

About  fifteen  hundred  years  before  Christ,  this  camp-ground 
of  ours  by  the  Waters  of  Merom  was  the  scene  of  one  of 
Joshua's  exterminating  battles.  Jabin,  King  of  Ilazor,  (up 
yonder  above  Dan,)  called  all  the  shieks  about  him  together, 
with  their  hosts,  to  make  ready  for  Israel's  terrible  General 
who  was  approaching. 

"  And  when  all  these  Kings  were  met  together,  they  came  and  pitched  together 
by  the  Waters  of  Merom,  to  fight  against  Israel. 

"  And  they  went  out,  they  and  all  their  hosts  with  them,  much  people,  even  as 
the  sand  that  is  upon  the  sea-shore  for  multitude,"  etc. 

But  Joshua  fell  upon  them  and  utterly  destroyed  them,  root 
and  branch.  That  was  his  usual  policy  in  war.  He  never  left 
any  chance  for  newspaper  controversies  about  who  won  the 
battle.  He  made  this  valley,  so  quiet  now,  a  reeking 
slaughter-pen. 

Somewhere  in  this  part  of  the  country — I  do  not  know  ex 
actly  where — Israel  fought  another  bloody  battle  a  hundred 
years  later.  Deborah,  the  prophetess,  told  Barak  to  take  ten 
thousand  men  and  sally  forth  against  another  King  Jabin  who 
had  been  doing  something.  Barak  came  down  from  Mount 
Tabor,  twenty  or  twenty-five  miles  from  here,  and  gave  battle 
to  Jabin's  forces,  who  were  in  command  of  Sisera.  Barak  won 
the  fight,  and  while  he  was  making  the  victory  complete  by 
the  usual  method  of  exterminating  the  remnant  of  the  defeated 
host,  Sisera  fled  away  on  foot,  and  when  he  was  nearly  ex 
hausted  by  fatigue  and  thirst,  one  Jael,  a  wroman  he  seems  to 
have  been  acquainted  with,  invited  him  to  come  into  her  tent 
.and  rest  himself.  The  weary  soldier  acceded  readily  enough, 


FULFILLMENT    OF     PROPHECY.  485 

and  Jael  put  him  to  bed.  He  said  he  was  very  thirsty,  and 
asked  his  generous  preserver  to  get  him  a  cup  of  water.  She 
brought  him  some  milk,  and  he  drank  of  it  gratefully  and  lay 
down  again,  to  forget  in  pleasant  dreams  his  lost  battle  and 
his  humbled  pride.  Presently  when  he  was  asleep  she  came 
softly  in  with  a  hammer  and  drove  a  hideous  tent-pen  down 
through  his  brain  ! 

"  For  he  was  fast  asleep  and  weary.  So  he  died."  Such  is 
the  touching  language  of  the  Bible.  "  The  Song  of  Deborah 
and  Barak "  praises  Jael  for  the  memorable  service  she  had 
rendered,  in  an  exultant  strain  : 

'•  Blessed  above  women  shall  Jael  the  wife  of  Heber  the  Kenite  be,  blessed  shall 
she  be  above  women  in  the  tent. 

"He  asked  for  water,  and  she. gave  him  milk;  she  brought  forth  butter  in  a 
lordly  dish. 

"  She  put  her  hand  to  the  nail,  and  her  right  hand  to  the  workman's  hammer ; 
and  with  the  hammer  she  smote  Sisera,  she  smote  off  his  head  when  she  had 
pierced  and  stricken  through  his  temples. 

"At  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell,  he  lay  down :  at  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell: 
where  he  bowed,  there  he  fell  down  dead." 

Stirring  scenes  like  these  occur  in  this  valley  no  more. 
There  is  not  a  solitary  village  throughout  its  whole  extent — 
not  for  thirty  miles  in  either  direction.  There  are  two  or  three 
small  clusters  of  Bedouin  tents,  but  not  a  single  permanent 
habitation.  One  may  ride  ten  miles,  hereabouts,  and  not  see 
ten  human  beings. 

To  this  region  one  of  the  prophecies  is  applied : 

I  will  bring  the  land  into  desolation ;  and  your  enemies  which  dwell  therein 
shall  be  astonished  at  it.  And  I  will  scatter  you  among  the  heathen,  and  I  will 
draw  out  a  sword  after  you ;  and  your  land  shall  be  desolate  and  your  cities 
waste."  t 

No  man  can  stand  here  by  deserted  Ain  Mellahah  and  say 
the  prophecy  has  not  been  fulfilled. 

In  a  verse  from  the  Bible  which  I  have  quoted  above,  occurs 
the  phrase  "  all  these  kings."  It  attracted  my  attention  in  a 
moment,  because  it  carries  to  my  mind  such  a  vastly  different 


486  BEGINNING    TO     UNLEARN. 

significance  from  what  it  always  did  at  home.  I  can  see  easily 
enough  that  if  I  wish  to  profit  by  this  tour  and  come  to  a  cor 
rect  understanding  of  the  matters  of  interest  connected  with 
it,  I  must  studiously  and  faithfully  unlearn  a  great  many 
things  I  have  somehow  absorbed  concerning  Palestine.  I 
must  begin  a  system  of  reduction.  Like  my  grapes  which  the 
spies  bore  out  of  the  Promised  Land,  I  have  got  every  thing  in 
Palestine  on  too  large  a  scale.  Some  of  my  ideas  were  wild 
enough.  The  word  Palestine  always  brought  to  my  mind  a 
vague  suggestion  of  a  country  as  large  as  the  United  States. 
I  do  not  know  why,  but  such  was  the  case.  I  suppose  it  was 
because  I  could  not  conceive  of  a  small  country  having  so 
large  a  history.  I  think  I  was  a  little  surprised  to  find  that 
the  grand  Sultan  of  Turkey  was  a  man  of  only  ordinary  size. 
I  must  try  to  reduce  my  ideas  of  Palestine  to  a  more  reason 
able  shape.  One  gets  large  impressions  in  boyhood,  some 
times,  which  he  has  to  fight  against  all  his  life.  "  All  these 
kings."  When  I  used  to  read  that  in  Sunday  School,  it  sug 
gested  to  me  the  several  kings  of  such  countries  as  England, 
France,  Spain,  Germany,  Russia,  etc.,  arrayed  in  splendid 
robes  ablaze  with  jewels,  marching  in  grave  procession,  with 
sceptres  of  gold  in  their  hands  and  flashing  crowns  upon  their 
heads.  But  here  in  Ain  Mellahah,  after  coming  through 
Syria,  and  after  giving  serious  study  to  the  character  and  cus 
toms  of  the  country,  the  phrase  "  all  these  kings "  loses  its 
grandeur.  It  suggests  only  a  parcel  of  petty  chiefs — ill-clad 
and  ill-conditioned  savages  much  like  our  Indians,  who  lived 
in  full  sight  of  each  other  and  whose  "  kingdoms  "  were  large 
when  they  were  five  miles  square  and  contained  two  thousand 
souls.  The  combined  monarchies  of  the  thirty  "  kings  "  de 
stroyed  by  Joshua  on  one  of  his  famous  campaigns,  only  cov 
ered  an  area  about  equal  to  four  of  our  counties  of  ordinary 
size.  The  poor  old  sheik  we  saw  at  Cesarea  Philippi  with  his 
ragged  band  of  a  hundred  followers,  would  have  been  called  a 
"  king  "  in  those  ancient  times. 

It  is  seven  in  the  morning,  and  as  we  are  in  the  country, 
the  grass  ought  to  be  sparkling  with  dew,  the  flowers  enrich- 


DESOLATION     OF     THE     LAND.  487 

fng  the  air  with  their  fragrance,  and  the  birds  singing  in  the 
trees.  But  alas,  there  is  no  dew  here,  nor  flowers,  nor  birds, 
nor  trees.  There  is  a  plain  and  an  unshaded  lake,  and  beyond 
them  some  barren  mountains.  The  tents  are  tumbling,  the 
Arabs  are  quarreling  like  dogs  and  cats,  as  usual,  the  camp 
ground  is  strewn  with  packages  and  bundles,  the  labor  of 
packing  them  upon  the  backs  of  the  mules  is  progressing  with 
great  activity,  the  horses  are  saddled,  the  umbrellas  are  out, 
and  in  ten  minutes  we  shall  mount  and  the  long  procession 
will  move  again.  The  white  city  of  the  Mellahah,  resurrected 
for  a  moment  out  of  the  dead  centuries,  will  have  disappeared 
again  and  left  no  sign. 


CHAPTER  XLVII. 

"TTT^E  traversed  some  miles  of  desolate  country  whose  soil 

V  V  is  ricn  enough,  but  is  given  over  wholly  to  weeds — a 
silent,  mournful  expanse,  wherein  we  saw  only  three  persons 
—Arabs,  with  nothing  on  but  a  long  coarse  shirt  like  the 
"  tow-linen  "  shirts  which  used  to  form  the  only  summer  gar 
ment  of  little  negro  boys  on  Southern  plantations.  Shepherds 
they  were,  and  they  charmed  their  flocks  with  the  traditional 
shepherd's  pipe — a  reed  instrument  that  made  music  as  ex 
quisitely  infernal  as  these  same  Arabs  create  when  they  sing. 

In  their  pipes  lingered  no  echo  of  the  wonderful  music  the 
shepherd  forefathers  heard  in  the  Plains  of  Bethlehem  what 
time  the  angels  sang  "  Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men." 

Part  of  the  ground  we  came  over  was  not  ground  at  all,  but 
rocks — cream-colored  rocks,  worn  smooth,  as  if  by  water ;  with 
seldom  an  edge  or  a  corner  on  them,  but  scooped  out,  honey 
combed,  bored  out  with  eye-holes,  and  thus  wrought  into  all 
manner  of  quaint  shapes,  among  which  the  uncouth  imitation 
of  skulls  was  frequent.  Over  this  part  of  the  route  were  occa 
sional  remains  of  an  old  Roman  road  like  the  Appian  Way, 
whose  paving-stones  still  clung  to  their  places  with  Roman 
tenacity. 

Gray  lizards,  those  heirs  of  ruin,  of  sepulchres  and  desola 
tion,  glided  in  and  out  among  the  rocks  or  lay  still  and  sunned 
themselves.  Where  prosperity  has  reigned,  and  fallen ;  where 
glory  has  flamed,  and  gone  out ;  where  beauty  has  dwelt,  and 
passed  away  ;  where  gladness  was,  and  sorrow  is  ;  where  the 
pomp  of  life  has  been,  and  silence  and  death  brood  in  its  high 


JACK'S     ADVENTURE. 


489 


places,  there  this  reptile  makes  his  home,  and  mocks  at  human 
vanity.  His  coat  is  the  color  of  ashes  :  and  ashes  are  the 
symbol  of  hopes  that  have  perished,  of  aspirations  that  came 
to  nought,  of  loves  that  are  buried.  If  he  could  speak,  he 
would  say,  Build  temples  :  I  will  lord  it  in  their  ruins  ;  build 
palaces :  I  will  inhabit  them  ;  erect  empires :  I  will  inherit 


HOUSE   OF   ANCIENT   POMP. 


them ;  bury  your  beautiful :  I  will  watch  the  worms  at  their 
work  ;  and  you,  who  stand  here  and  moralize  over  me :  I  will 
crawl  over  your  corpse  at  the  last. 

A  few  ants  were  in  this  desert  place,  but  merely  to  spend 
the  summer.  They  brought  their  provisions  from  Ain  Mel- 
laliali — eleven  miles. 

Jack  is  not  very  well  to-day,  it  is  easy  to  see ;  but  boy  as  he 
is,  he  is  too  much  of  a  man  to  speak  of  it.  He  exposed  him 
self  to  the  sun  too  much  yesterday,  but  since  it  came  of  his 
earnest  desire  to  learn,  and  to  make  this  journey  as  useful  as 
the  opportunities  will  allow,  no  one  seeks  to  discourage  him 
by  fault-finding.  We  missed  him  an  hour  from  the  camp,  and 
then  found  him  some  distance  away,  by  the  edge  of  a  brook, 


490 


JACK'S    ADVENTURE. 


and  with  no  umbrella  to  protect  him  from  the  fierce  sun.  If 
he  had  been  used  to  going  without  his  umbrella,  it  would  have 
been  well  enough,  of  course  ;  but  he  was  not.  He  was  just  in 

the  act  of  throwing  a 
clod  at  a  mud-turtle 
which  was  sunning  it 
self  on  a  small  log  in 
the  brook.  We  said : 

"Don't  do  that,  Jack. 
"What  do  you  want  to 
harm  him  for?  What 
has  he  done?" 

"  Well,  then,  I  won't 
kill  him,  but  I  ought  to, 
because  he  is  a  fraud." 

We  asked  him  why, 
but  he  said  it  was  no 
matter.    We  asked  him 
why,  once  or  twice,  as 
JACK.  we  walked  back  to  the 

camp,  but  he  still  said 

it  was  no  matter.  But  late  at  night,  when  he  was  sitting  in  a 
thoughtful  mood  on  the  bed,  we  asked  him  again  and  he  said  : 
"  Well,  it  don't  matter  ;  I  don't  mind  it  now,  but  I  did  not 
like  it  to-day,  you  know,  because  /  don't  tell  any  thing  that 
isn't  so,  and  I  don't  think  the  Colonel  ought  to,  either.  But 
he  did  ;  he  told  us  at  prayers  in  the  Pilgrims'  tent,  last  night, 
and  he  seemed  ,  as  if  he  was  reading  it  out  of  the  Bible,  too, 
about  this  country  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  and  about  the 
voice  of  the  turtle  being  heard  in  the  land.  I  thought  that 
was  drawing  it  a  little  strong,  about  the  turtles,  any  how,  but 
I  asked  Mr.  Church  if  it  was  so,  and  he  said  it  was,  and  what 
Mr.  Church  tells  me,  I  believe.  But  I  sat  there  and  watched 
that  turtle  nearly  an  hour  to-day,  and  I  almost  burned  up  in 
the  sun  ;  but  I  never  heard  him  sing.  I  believe  I  sweated  a 
double  handful  of  sweat — I  know  I  did — because  it  got  in  my 
eyes,  and  it  was  running  down  over  my  nose  all  the  time ;  and 


JACK'S    ADVENTURE. 


491 


you  know  my  pants  are  tighter  than  any  body  else's — Paris 
foolishness — and  the  buckskin  seat  of  them  got  wet  with  sweat, 
and  then  got  dry  again  and  began  to  draw  up  and  pinch  and 
tear  loose — it  was  awful — but  I  never  heard  him  sing.  Fi 
nally  I  said,  This  is  a  fraud — that  is  what  it  is,  it  is  a  fraud — 
and  if  I  had  had  any  sense  I  might  have  known  a  cursed  mud- 
turtle  couldn't  sing.  And  then  I  said,  I  don't  wish  to  be  hard 
on  this  fellow,  and  I  will  just  give  him  ten  minutes  to  com 
mence  ;  ten  minutes — and  then  if  he  don't,  down  goes  his 
building.  But  he  didn't  commence,  you  know.  I  had  staid 


A   DISAPPOINTED    AUDIENCE. 


there  all  that  time,  thinking  may  be  he  might,  pretty  soon, 
because  he  kept  on  raising  his  head  up  and  letting  it  down, 
and  drawing  the  skin  over  his  eyes  for  a  minute  and  then 
opening  them  out  again,  as  if  he  was  trying  to  study  up  some 
thing  to  sing,  but  just  as  the  ten  minutes  were  up  and  I  was 
all  beat  out  and  blistered,  he  laid  his  blamed  head  down  on  a 
knot  and  went  fast  asleep." 

"  It  was  a  little  hard,  after  you  had  waited  so  long." 

"  I  should  think  so.     I  said,  "Well,  if  you  won't  sing,  you 


492  JOSEPH'S    PIT. 

shan't  sleep,  any  way ;  and  if  you  fellows  had  let  me  alone  I 
would  have  made  him  shin  out  of  Galilee  quicker  than  any 
turtle  ever  did  yet.  But  it  isn't  any  matter  now — let  it  go. 
The  skin  is  all  off  the  back  of  my  neck." 

About  ten  in  the  morning  we  halted  at  Joseph's  Pit.  This 
is  a  ruined  Khan  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  one  of  whose  side 
courts  is  a  great  walled  and  arched  pit  with  water  in  it,  and 
this  pit,  one  tradition  says,  is  the  one  Joseph's  brethren  cast 
him  into.  A  more  authentic  tradition,  aided  by  the  geography 
of  the  country,  places  the  pit  in  Dothan,  some  two  days'  jour 
ney  from  here.  However,  since  there  are  many  who  believe 
in  this  present  pit  as  the  true  one,  it  has  its  interest. 

It  is  hard  to  make  a  choice  of  the  most  beautiful  passage  in 
a  book  which  is  so  gemmed  with  beautiful  passages  as  the 
Bible ;  but  it  is  certain  that  not  many  things  within  its  lids 
may  take  rank  above  the  exquisite  story  of  Joseph.  Who 
taught  those  ancient  writers  their  simplicity  of  language,  their 
felicity  of  expression,  their  pathos,  and  above  all,  their  faculty 
of  sinking  themselves  entirely  out  of  sight  of  the  reader  and 
making  the  narrative  stand  out  alone  and  seem  to  tell  itself? 
Shakspeare  is  always  present  when  one  reads  his  book  ;  Ma- 
caulay  is  present  when  we  follow  the  march  of  his  stately  sen 
tences  ;  but  the  Old  Testament  writers  are  hidden  from  view. 

If  the  pit  I  have  been  speaking  of  is  the  right  one,  a  scene 
transpired  there,  long  ages  ago,  which  is  familiar  to  us  all  in 
pictures.  The  sons  of  Jacob  had  been  pasturing  their  flocks 
near  there.  Their  father  grew  uneasy  at  their  long  absence, 
and  sent  Joseph,  his  favorite,  to  see  if  any  thing  had  gone 
wrong  with  them.  He  traveled  six  or  seven  days'  journey ;  he 
was  only  seventeen  years  old,  and,  boy  like,  he  toiled  through 
that  long  stretch  of  the  vilest,  rockiest,  dustiest  country  in 
Asia,  arrayed  in  the  pride  of  his  heart,  his  beautiful  claw 
hammer  coat  of  many  colors.  Joseph  was  the  favorite,  and 
that  was  one  crime  in  the  eyes  of  his  brethren ;  he  had 
dreamed  dreams,  and  'interpreted  them  to  foreshadow  his  ele 
vation  far  above  all  his  family  in  the  far  future,  and  that  was 
another ;  he  was  dressed  well  and  had  doubtless  displayed  the 


JOSEPH'S     MAGNANIMITY    AND     ESAU'S.          493 

harmless  vanity  of  youth  in  keeping  the  fact  prominently  be 
fore  his  brothers.  These  were  crimes  his  elders  fretted  over 
among  themselves  and  proposed  to  punish  when  the  opportu 
nity  should  oifer.  When  they  saw  him  coming  up  from  the 
Sea  of  Galilee,  they  recognized  him  and  were  glad.  They  said, 
"  Lo,  here  is  this  dreamer — let  us  kill  him."  But  Reuben 
pleaded  for  his  life,  and  they  spared  it.  But  they  seized  the 
boy,  and  stripped  the  hated  coat  from  his  back  and  pushed 
him  into  the  pit.  They  intended  to  let  him  die  there,  but 
Reuben  intended  to  liberate  him  secretly.  However,  while 
Reuben  was  away  for  a  little  while,  the  brethren  sold  Joseph 
to  some  Ishmaelitish  merchants  who  were  journeying  towards 
Egypt.  Such  is  the  history  of  the  pit.  And  the  self-same  pit 
is  there  in  that  place,  even  to  this  day ;  and  there  it  will  re 
main  until  the  next  detachment  of  image-breakers  and  tomb- 
desecraters  arrives  from  the  Quaker  City  excursion,  and  they 
will  infallibly  dig  it  up  and  carry  it  away  with  them.  For 
behold  in  them  is  no  reverence  for  the  solemn  monuments  of 
the  past,  and  whithersoever  they  go  they  destroy  and  spare 
not. 

Joseph  became  rich,  distinguished,  powerful — as  the  Bible 
expresses  it,  "  lord  over  all  the  land  of  Egypt."  Joseph  was 
the  real  king,  the  strength,  the  brain  of  the  monarchy,  though 
Pharaoh  held  the  title.  Joseph  is  one  of  the  truly  great  men 
of  the  Old  Testament.  And  he  was  the  noblest  and  the  man 
liest,  save  Esau.  Why  shall  we  not  say  a  good  word  for  the 
princely  Bedouin?  The  only  crime  that  can  be  brought 
against  him  is  that  he  was  unfortunate.  Why  must  every  body 
praise  Joseph's  great-hearted  generosity  to  his  cruel  brethren, 
without  stint  of  fervent  language,  and  fling  only  a  reluctant 
bone  of  praise  to  Esau  for  his  still  sublimer  generosity  to  the 
brother  who  had  wronged  him  ?  Jacob  took  advantage  of 
Esau's  consuming  hunger  to  rob  him  of  his  birthright  and  the 
great  honor  and  consideration  that  belonged  to  the  position  ; 
by  treachery  and  falsehood  he  robbed  him  of  his  father's  bless 
ing  ;  he  made  of  him  a  stranger  in  his  home,  and  a  wanderer. 
Yet  after  twenty  years  had  passed  away  and  Jacob  met  Esau 


494  THE    SACRED     LAKE     OF     GENESSARET. 

and  fell  at  his  feet  quaking  with  fear  and  begging  piteously  to 
be  spared  the  punishment  he  knew  he  deserved,  what  did  that 
magnificent  savage  do  ?  He  fell  upon  his  neck  and  embraced 
him !  "When  Jacob — who  was  incapable  of  comprehending 
nobility  of  character — still  doubting,  still  fearing,  insisted 
upon  "  finding  grace  with  my  lord  "  by  the  bribe  of  a  present 
of  cattle,  what  did  the  gorgeous  son  of  the  desert  say  ? 

"Nay,  I  have  enough,  my  brother;  keep  that  thou  hast  unto 
thyself!" 

Esau  found  Jacob  rich,  beloved  by  wives  and  children,  and 
traveling  in  state,  with  servants,  herds  of  cattle  and  trains  of 
camels — but  he  himself  was  still  the  uncourted  outcast  this 
brother  had  made  him.  After  thirteen  years  of  romantic  mys 
tery,  the  brethren  who  had  wronged  Joseph,  came,  strangers 
in  a  strange  land,  hungry  and  humble,  to  buy  "  a  little  food ;" 
and  being  summoned  to  a  palace,  charged  with  crime,  they 
beheld  in  its  owner  their  wronged  brother ;  they  were  trem 
bling  beggars — he,  the  lord  of  a  mighty  empire  !  What  Jo 
seph  that  ever  lived  would  have  thrown  away  such  a  chance 
to  "  show  off?"  Who  stands  first — outcast  Esau  forgiving 
Jacob  in  prosperity,  or  Joseph  on  a  king's  throne  forgiving  the 
ragged  tremblers  whose  happy  rascality  placed  him  there  ? 

Just  before  we  came  to  Joseph's  Pit,  we  had  "  raised  "  a  hill, 
and  there,  a  few  miles  before  us,  with  not  a  tree  or  a  shrub  to 
interrupt  the  view,  lay  a  vision  which  millions  of  worshipers 
in  the  far  lands  of  the  earth  would  give  half  their  possessions 
to  see — the  sacred  Sea  of  Galilee ! 

Therefore  we  tarried  only  a  short  time  at  the  pit.  We 
rested  the  horses  and  ourselves,  and  felt  for  a  few  minutes  the 
blessed  shade  of  the  ancient  buildings.  We  were  out  of  water, 
but  the  two  or  three  scowling  Arabs,  with  their  long  guns, 
who  were  idling  about  the  place,  said  they  had  none  and  that 
there  was  none  in  the  vicinity.  They  knew  there  was  a  little 
brackish  water  in  the  pit,  but  they  venerated  a  place  made 
sacred  by  their  ancestor's  imprisonment  too  much  to  be  willing 
to  see  Christian  dogs  drink  from  it.  But  Ferguson  tied  rags 
and  handkerchiefs  together  till  he  made  a  rope  long  enough  to 


PILGRIM     ENTHUSIASM. 


495 


lower  a  vessel  to  the  bottom,  and  we  drank  and  then  rode  on ; 
and  in  a  short  time  we  dismounted  on  those  shores  which  the 
feet  of  the  Saviour  have  made  holy  ground. 

At  noon  we  took  a  swim  in  the  Sea  of  Galilee — a  blessed 
privilege  in  this  roasting  climate — and  then  lunched  under  a 
neglected  old  fig-tree  at  the  fountain  they  call  Ain-et-Tin,  a 
hundred  yards  from  ruined  Capernaum.  Every  rivulet  that 
gurgles  out  of  the  rocks  and  sands  of  this  part  of  the  world  is 
dubbed  with  the  title  of  "  fountain,"  and  people  familiar  with 
the  Hudson,  the  great  lakes  and  the  Mississippi  fall  into  trans 
ports  of  admiration  over  them,  and  exhaust  their  powers  of 
composition  in 
writing  their 
praises.  If  all 
the  poetry  and 
nonsense  that 
have  been  dis 
charged  upon 
the  '  fountains 
and  the  bland 
scenery  of  this 
region  were 
collected  in  a 
book,  it  would 
make  a  most 
valuable  vol 
ume  to  burn. 

During 
luncheon,  the 
pilgrim  enthu 
siasts  of  our 
party,  who  had 
been  so  light- 
hearted  and 

happy  ever  since  they  touched  holy  ground  that  they  did  little 
but  mutter  incoherent  rhapsodies,  could  scarcely  eat,  so  anx 
ious  were  they  to  "  take  shipping "  and  sail  in  very  person 


FIG   TREE. 


496  PILGRIM     ENTHUSIASM. 

upon  the  waters  that  had  borne  the  vessels  of  the  Apostles. 
Their  anxiety  grew  and  their  excitement  augmented  with 
every  fleeting  moment,  until  my  fears  were  aroused  and  I  be 
gan  to  have  misgivings  that  in  their  present  condition  they 
might  break  recklessly  loose  from  all  considerations  of  pru 
dence  and  buy  a  whole  fleet  of  ships  to  sail  in  instead  of  hiring 
a  single  one  for  an  hour,  as  quiet  folk  are  wont  to  do.  I  trem 
bled  to  think  of  the  ruined  purses  this  day's  performances 
might  result  in.  I  could  not  help  reflecting  bodingly  upon  the 
intemperate  zeal  with  which  middle-aged  men  are  apt  to  sur 
feit  themselves  upon  a  seductive  folly  wrhich  they  have  tasted 
for  the  first  time.  And  yet  I  did  not  feel  that  I  had  a  right 
to  be  surprised  at  the  state  of  things  which  was  giving  me  so 
much  concern.  These  men  had  been  taught  from  infancy  to 
revere,  almost  to  worship,  the  holy  places  whereon  their  happy 
eyes  were  resting  now.  For  many  and  many  a  year  this  very 
picture  had  visited  their  thoughts  by  day  and  floated  through 
their  dreams  by  night.  To  stand  before  it  in  the  flesh — to  see 
it  as  they  saw  it  now — to  sail  upon  the  hallowed  sea,  and  kiss 
the  holy  soil  that  compassed  it  about :  these  were  aspirations 
they  had  cherished  while  a  generation  dragged  its  lagging  sea 
sons  by  and  left  its  furrows  in  their  faces  and  its  frosts  upon 
their  hair.  To  look  upon  this  picture,  and  sail  upon  this  sea, 
they  had  forsaken  home  and  its  idols  and  journeyed  thousands 
and  thousands  of  miles,  in  weariness  and  tribulation.  What 
wonder  that  the  sordid  lights  of  work-day  prudence  should 
pale  before  the  glory  of  a  hope  like  theirs  in  the  full  splendor 
of  its  fruition  ?  Let  them  squander  millions  !  I  said — who 
speaks  of  money  at  a  time  like  this  ? 

In  this  frame  of  mind  I  followed,  as  fast  as  I  could,  the 
eager  footsteps  of  the  pilgrims,  and  stood  upon  the  shore  of  the 
lake,  and  swelled,  with  hat  and  voice,  the  frantic  hail  they 
sent  after  the  "  ship  "  that  was  speeding  by.  It  was  a  success. 
The  toilers  of  the  sea  ran  in  and  beached  their  barque.  Joy 
sat  upon  every  countenance. 

"  How  much  ? — ask  him  how  much,  Ferguson ! — how  much 
to  take  us  all — eight  of  us,  and  you- — to  Bethsaida,  yonder, 


WHY    WE     DID     NOT     SAIL     ON     GALILEE. 


497 


and  to  the  mouth  of  Jordan,  and  to  the  place  where  the  swine 
ran  down  into  the  sea — quick  ! — and  we  want  to  coast  around 
every  where — every  where ! — all  day  long  ! — /  could  sail  a  year 
in  these  waters  ! — and  tell  him  we'll  stop  at  Magdala  and  fin 
ish  at  Tiberias  ! — ask  him  how  much  ? — any  thing — any  thing 
whatever ! — tell  him  we  don't  care  what  the  expense  is  !"  [I 
said  to  myself,  I  knew  how  it  would  be.] 

Ferguson — (interpreting) — "  He  says  two  Napoleons — eight 
dollars." 

One  or  two  countenances  fell.     Then  a  pause. 

"  Too  much  ! — we'll  give  him  one  !" 

I  never  shall  know  how  it  was — I  shudder  yet  when  I  think 
how  the  place  is  given  to  miracles — but  in  a  single  instant  of 


time,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  that  ship  was  twenty  paces  from  the 
shore,  and  speeding  away  like  a  frightened  thing !  Eight  crest 
fallen  creatures  stood  upon  the  shore,  and  O,  to  think  of  it ! 
this — this — after  all  that  overmastering  ecstacy  !  Oh,  shame 
ful,  shameful  ending,  after  such  unseemly  boasting  !  It  was 

32 


498          WHY     WE     DID     NOT     SAIL     ON     GALILEE. 

too  much  like  "  Ho !  let  me  at  him  !"  followed  by  a  prudent 
"  Two  of  you  hold  him — one  can  hold  me !" 

Instantly  there  was  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth  in  the 
camp.  The  two  Napoleons  were  offered — more  if  necessary — 
and  pilgrims  and  dragoman  shouted  themselves  hoarse  with 
pleadings  to  the  retreating  boatmen  to  come  back.  But  they 
sailed  serenely  away  and  paid  no  further  heed  to  pilgrims  who 
had  dreamed  all  their  lives  of  some  day  skimming  over  the 
sacred  waters  of  Galilee  and  listening  to  its  hallowed  story  in 
the  whisperings  of  its  waves,  and  had  journeyed  countless 
leagues  to  do  it,  and — and  then  concluded  that  the  fare  was 
too  high.  Impertinent  Mohammedan  Arabs,  to  think  such 
things  of  gentlemen  of  another  faith  ! 

Well,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  just  submit  and  forego 
the  privilege  of  voyaging  on  Genessaret,  after  coming  half 
around  the  globe  to  taste  that  pleasure.  There  was  a  time, 
when  the  Saviour  taught  here,  that  boats  were  plenty  among 
the  fishermen  of  the  coasts — but  boats  and  fishermen  both  are 
gone,  now ;  and  old  Josephus  had  a  fleet  of  men-of-war  in 
these  waters  eighteen  centuries  ago — a  hundred  and  thirty 
bold  canoes — but  they,  also,  have  passed  away  and  left  no  sign. 
They  battle  here  no  more  by  sea,  and  the  commercial  marine 
of  Galilee  numbers  only  two  small  ships,  just  of  a  pattern 
with  the  little  skiffs  the  disciples  knew.  One  was  lost  to  us 
for  good — the  other  was  miles  away  and  far  out  of  hail.  So 
we  mounted  the  horses  and  rode  grimly  on  toward  Magdala, 
cantering  along  in  the  edge  of  the  water  for  want  of  the  means 
of  passing  over  it 

How  the  pilgrims  abused  each  other  !  Each  said  it  was  the 
other's  fault,  and  each  in  turn  denied  it.  Xo  word  was  spoken 
by  the  sinners — even  the  mildest  sarcasm  might  have  been 
dangerous  at  such  a  time.  Sinners  that  have  been  kept  down 
and  had  examples  held  up  to  them,  and  suffered  frequent  lec 
tures,  and  been  so  put  upon  in  a  moral  way  and  in  the  matter 
of  going  slow  and  being  serious  and  bottling  up  slang,  and  so 
crowded  in  regard  to  the  matter  of  being  proper  and  always 
and  forever  behaving,  that  their  lives  have  become  a  burden 


ABOUT     CAPERNAUM.  499 

to  them,  would  not  lag  behind  pilgrims  at  such  a  time  as  this, 
and  wink  furtively,  and  be  joyful,  and  commit  other  such 
crimes — because  it  would  not  occur  to  them  to  do  it.  Otherwise 
they  would.  But  they  did  do  it,  though — and  it  did  them  a 
world  of  good  to  hear  the  pilgrims  abuse  each  other,  too.  We 
took  an  unworthy  satisfaction  in  seeing  them  fall  out,  now  and 
then,  because  it  showed  that  they  were  only  poor  human  peo 
ple  like  us,  after  all. 

So  we  all  rode  down  to  Magdala,  while  the  gnashing  of 
teeth  waxed  and  waned  by  turns,  and  harsh  words  troubled 
the  holy  calm  of  Galilee. 

Lest  any  man  think  I  mean  to  be  ill-natured  when  I  talk 
about  our  pilgrims  as  I  have  been  talking,  I  wish  to  say  in  all 
sincerity  that  I  do  not.  I  would  not  listen  to  lectures  from 
men  I  did  not  like  and  could  not  respect ;  and  none  of  these 
can  say  I  ever  took  their  lectures  unkindly,  or  was  restive  un 
der  the  infliction,  or  failed  to  try  to  profit  by  what  they  said  to 
me.  They  are  better  men  than  I  am  ;  I  can  say  that  honest 
ly  ;  they  are  good  friends  of  mine,  too — and  besides,  if  they 
did  not  wish  to  be  stirred  up  occasionally  in  print,  why  in  the 
mischief  did  they  travel  with  me?  They  knew  me.  They 
knew  my  liberal  way — that  I  like  to  give  and  take — when  it 
is  for  me  to  give  and  other  people  to  take.  When  one  of 
them  threatened  to  leave  me  in  Damascus  when  I  had  the 
cholera,  he  had  no  real  idea  of  doing  it — I  know  his  pas 
sionate  nature  and  the  good  impulses  that  underlie  it.  And 
did  I  not  overhear  Church,  another  pilgrim*,  say  he  did  not 
care  who  went  or  who  staid,  he  would  stand  by  me  till  I 
walked  out  of  Damascus  on  my  own  feet  or  was  carried  out  in 
a  coffin,  if  it  was  a  year  ?  And  do  I  not  include  Church  every 
time  I  abuse  the  pilgrims — and  would  I  be  likely  to  speak  ill- 
naturedly  of  him  ?  I  wish  to  stir  them  up  and  make  them 
healthy  ;  that  is  all. 

We  had  left  Capernaum  behind  us.  It  was  only  a  shapeless 
ruin.  It  bore  no  semblance  to  a  town,  and  had  nothing  about 
it  to  suggest  that  it  had  ever  been  a  town.  But  all  desolate 
and  unpeopled  as  it  was,  it  was  illustrious  ground.  From  it 


500  ABOUT     CAPERNAUM. 

sprang  that  tree  of  Christianity  whose  broad  arms  overshadow 
so  many  distant  lands  to-day.  After  Christ  was  tempted  of 
the  devil  in  the  desert,  he  came  here  and  began  his  teachings  ; 
and  during  the  three  or  four  years  he  lived  afterward,  this 
place  was  his  home  almost  altogether.  He  began  to  heal  the 
sick,  and  his  fame  soon  spread  so  widely  that  sufferers  came 
from  Syria  and  beyond  Jordan,  and  even  from  Jerusalem,  sev 
eral  days'  journey  away,  to  be  cured  of  their  diseases.  Here 
he  healed  the  centurion's  servant  and  Peter's  mother-in-law, 
and  multitudes  of  the  lame  and  the  blind  and  persons  pos 
sessed  of  devils ;  and  here,  also,  he  raised  Jairus's  daughter 
from  the  dead.  He  went  into  a  ship  with  his  disciples,  and 
when  they  roused  him  from  sleep  in  the  midst  of  a  storm,  he 
quieted  the  winds  and  lulled  the  troubled  sea  to  rest  with  his 
voice.  He  passed  over  to  the  other  side,  a  few  miles  away, 
and  relieved  two  men  of  devils,  which  passed  into  some  swine. 
After  his  return  he  called  Matthew  from  the  receipt  of  cus 
toms,  performed  some  cures,  and  created  scandal  by  eating 
with  publicans  and  sinners.  Then  he  went  healing  and  teach 
ing  through  Galilee,  and  even  journeyed  to  Tyre  and  Sidon. 
He  chose  the  twelve  disciples,  and  sent  them  abroad  to  preach 
the  new  gospel.  He  worked  miracles  in  Bethsaida  and  Cho- 
razin — villages  two  or  three  miles  from  Capernaum.  It  was 
near  one  of  them  that  the  miraculous  draft  of  fishes  is  sup 
posed  to  have  been  taken,  and  it  was  in  the  desert  places  near 
the  other  that  he  fed  the  thousands  by  the  miracles  of  the 
loaves  and  fishes.  He  curbed  them  both,  and  Capernaum  also, 
for  not  repenting,  after  all  the  great  works  he  had  done  in 
their  midst,  and  prophesied  against  them.  They  are  all  in 
ruins,  now — which  is  gratifying  to  the  pilgrims,  for,  as  usual, 
they  fit  the  eternal  words  of  gods  to  the  evanescent  things  of 
this  earth ;  Christ,  it  is  more  probable,  referred  to  the  people, 
not  their  shabby  villages  of  wigwams :  he  said  it  would  be  sad 
for  them  at  "  the  day  of  judgment " — and  what  business  have 
mud-hovels  at  the  Day  of  Judgment  ?  it  would  not  affect  the 
prophecy  in  the  least — it  would  neither  prove  it  or  disprove  it 
— if  these  towns  were  splendid  cities  now  instead  of  the  almost 


501 

vanished  ruins  they  are.  Christ  visited  Magdala,  which  is  near 
by  Capernaum,  and  he  also  visited  Cesarea  Philippi.  He 
went  up  to  his  old  home  at  Nazareth,  and  saw  his  brothers 
Joses,  and  Judas,  and  James,  and  Simon — those  persons  who, 
being  own  brothers  to  Jesus  Christ,  one  would  expect  to  hear 
mentioned  sometimes,  yet  who  ever  saw  their  names  in  a 
newspaper  or  heard  them  from  a  pulpit  ?  Who  ever  inquires 
what  manner  of  youths  they  were ;  and  whether  they  slept 
with  Jesus,  played  with  him  and  romped  about  him ;  quarreled 
with  him  concerning  toys  and  trifles ;  struck  him  in  anger,  not 
suspecting  wrhat  he  was  ?  Who  ever  wonders  what  they 
thought  when  they  saw  him  come  back  to  Nazareth  a  celeb 
rity,  and  looked  long  at  his  unfamiliar  face  to  make  sure,  and 
then  said,  "  It  is  Jesus  ?"  Who  wonders  what  passed  in  their 
minds  when  they  saw  this  brother,  (who  was  only  a  brother  to 
them,  however  much  he  might  be  to  others  a  mysterious  stran 
ger  who  was  a  god  and  had  stood  face  to  face  with  God  above 
the  clouds,)  doing  strange  miracles  with  crowds  of  astonished 
people  for  witnesses  ?  Who  wonders  if  the  brothers  of  Jesus 
asked  him  to  come  home  with  them,  and  said  his  mother  and 
his  sisters  were  grieved  at  his  long  absence,  and  would  be  wild 
with  delight  to  see  his  face  again  ?  Who  ever  gives  a  thought 
to  the  sisters  of  Jesus  at  all  ? — yet  he  had  sisters  ;  and  memo 
ries  of  them  must  have  stolen  into  his  mind  often  when  he  was 
ill-treated  among  strangers ;  when  he  was  homeless  and  said 
he  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head  ;  when  all  deserted  him,  even 
Peter,  and  he  stood  alone  among  his  enemies. 

Christ  did  few  miracles  in  Nazareth,  and  staid  but  a  little 
while.  The  people  said,  "  Tliis  the  Son  of  God !  Why,  his 
father  is  nothing  but  a  carpenter.  We  know  the  family.  We 
see  them  every  day.  Are  not  his  brothers  named  so  and  so, 
and  his  sisters  so  and  so,  and  is  not  his  mother  the  person  they 
call  Mary  ?  This  is  absurd."  He  did  not  curse  his  home,  but 
he  shook  its  dust  from  his  feet  and  went  away. 

Capernaum  lies  close  to  the  edge  of  the  little  sea,  in  a  small 
plain  some  five  miles  long  and  a  mile  or  two  wide,  which  is 
mildly  adorned  with  oleanders  which  look  all  the  better  con- 


502  THE     CRADLE     OF    CHRISTIANITY. 

trasted  with  the  bald  hills  and  the  howling  deserts  which  sur 
round  them,  but  they  are  not  as  deliriously  beautiful  as  the 
books  paint  them.  If  one  be  calm  and  resolute  he  can  look 
upon  their  comeliness  and  live. 

One  of  the  most  astonishing  things  that  have  yet  fallen  un 
der  our  observation  is  the  exceedingly  small  portion  of  the 
earth  from  which  sprang  the  now  flourishing  plant  of  Chris 
tianity.  The  longest  journey  our  Saviour  ever  performed  was 
from  here  to  Jerusalem — about  one  hundred  to  one  hundred 
and  twenty  miles.  The  next  longest  was  from  here  to  Sidon 
— say  about  sixty  or  seventy  miles.  Instead  of  being  wide 
apart — as  American  appreciation  of  distances  would  naturally 
suggest — the  places  made  most  particularly  celebrated  by  the 
presence  of  Christ  are  nearly  all  right  here  in  full  view,  and 
within  cannon-shot  of  Capernaum.  Leaving  out  two  or  three 
short  journeys  of  the  Saviour,  he  spent  his  life,  preached  his 
gospel,  and  performed  his  miracles  within  a  compass  no  larger 
than  an  ordinary  county  in  the  United  States.  It  is  as  much 
as  I  can  do  to  comprehend  this  stupefying  fact.  How  it  wears 
a  man  out  to  have  to  read  up  a  hundred  pages  of  history  every 
two  or  three  miles — for  verily  the  celebrated  localities  of  Pal 
estine  occur  that  close  together.  How  wearily,  how  bewilder- 
ingly  they  swarm  about  your  path  ! 

In  due  time  we  reached  the  ancient  village  of  Magdala. 


CHAPTER  XLVIII. 


MAGDALA  is  not  a  beautiful  place.  It  is  thoroughly 
Syrian,  and  that  is  to  say  that  it  is  thoroughly  ugly, 
and  cramped,  squalid,  uncomfortable,  and  filthy — just  the  style 
of  cities  that  have  adorned  the  country  since  Adam's  time,  as 
all  writers  have  labored  hard  to  prove,  and  have  succeeded. 
The  streets  of  Magdala  are  any  where  from  three  to  six  feet 
wide,  and  reeking  with  uncleanliness.  The  houses  are  from 
five  to  seven  feet  high,  and  all  built  upon  one  arbitrary  plan — 
the  ungraceful  form  of  a  dry-goods  box.  The  sides  are  daubed 
with  a  smooth  white  plaster,  and  tastefully  frescoed  aloft  and 
alow  with  disks  of  camel-dung  placed  there  to  dry.  This  gives 
the  edifice  the  romantic  appearance  of  having  been  riddled 
with  cannon-balls,  and  imparts  to  it  a  very  warlike  aspect. 
When  the  artist  has  arranged  his  materials  with  an  eye  to  just 
proportion — the  small  and  the  large  flakes  in  alternate  rows, 
and  separated  by  carefully-considered  intervals — I  know  of 
nothing  more  cheerful  to  look  upon  than  a  spirited  Syrian 
fresco.  The  flat,  plastered  roof  is  garnished  by  picturesque 
stacks  of  fresco  materials,  which,  having  become  thoroughly 
dried  and  cured,  are  placed  there  where  it  will  be  convenient. 
It  is  used  for  fuel.  There  is  no  timber  of  any  consequence  in 
Palestine — none  at  all  to  wraste  upon  fires — and  neither  are 
there  any  mines  of  coal.  If  my  description  has  been  intelli 
gible,  you  will  perceive,  now,  that  a  square,  flat-roofed  hovel, 
neatly  frescoed,  with  its  wall-tops  gallantly  bastioned  and  tur- 
reted  with  dried  camel-refuse,  gives  to  a  landscape  a  feature 
that  is  exceedingly  festive  and  picturesque,  especially  if  one  is 


504:          GRAND     RECEPTION     OF    THE     PILGRIMS. 


careful  to  remember  to  stick  in  a  cat  wherever,  about  the 
premises,  there  is  room  for  a  cat  to  sit.  There  are  no  windows 
to  a  Syrian  hut,  and  110  chimneys.  When  I  used  to  read  that 
they  let  a  bed-ridden  man  down  through  the  roof  of  a  house 
in  Capernaum  to  get  him  into  the  presence  of  the  Saviour,  I 
generally  had  a  three-story  brick  in  my  mind,  and  marveled 

that  they 
did  not 
break 
his  neck 
with  the 
strange 
experi 
ment.  I 
p  e  rceive 
n  o  w  , 
however, 
that  they 
in  i  g  h  t 
have  ta 
ken  him 

by  the  heels  and  thrown  him  clear  over  the  house  without  dis 
commoding  him  very  much.  Palestine  is  not  changed  any 
since  those  days,  in  manners,  customs,  architecture,  or  people. 
As  we  rode  into  Magdala  not  a  soul  was  visible.  But  the 
ring  of  the  horses'  hoofs  roused  the  stupid  population,  and  they 
all  came  trooping  out — old  men  and  old  women,  boys  and 
girls,  the  blind,  the  crazy,  and  the  crippled,  all  in  ragged, 
soiled  and  scanty  raiment,  and  all  abject  beggars  by  nature, 
instinct  and  education.  How  the  vermin -tortured  vagabonds 
did  swarm  !  How  they  showed  their  scars  and  sores,  and  pit- 
eously  pointed  to  their  maimed  and  crooked  limbs,  and  begged 
with  their  pleading  eyes  for  charity  !  We  had  invoked  a  spirit 
we  could  not  lay.  They  hung  to  the  horses's  tails,  clung  to 
their  manes  and  the  stirrups,  closed  in  on  every  side  in  scorn 
of  dangerous  hoofs — and  out  of  their  infidel  throats,  with  one 
accord,  burst  an  agonizing  and  most  infernal  chorus :  "  HOW- 


SYRIAN  HOUSE. 


OLD    TIBERIAS.  505 

ajji,  bucksheesli !  liowajji,  bucksheesh !  howajji,  bucksheesh  ! 
bucksheesh !  bucksheesli !"  I  never  was  in  a  storm  like  that 
before. 

As  we  paid  the  bucksheesh  out  to  sore-eyed  children  and 
brown,  buxom  girls  with  repulsively  tattooed  lips  and  chins, 
we'  filed  through  the  town  and  by  many  an  exquisite  fresco, 
till  we  came  to  a  bramble-infested  inclosure  and  a  Roman- 
looking  ruin  which  had  been  the  veritable  dwelling  of  St.  Mary 
Magdalene,  the  friend  and  follower  of  Jesus.  The  guide  be 
lieved  it,  and  so  did  I.  I  could  not  well  do  otherwise,  with 
the  house  right  there  before  my  eyes  as  plain  as  day.  The 
pilgrims  took  down  portions  of  the  front  wall  for  specimens, 
as  is  their  honored  custom,  and  then  we  departed. 

We  are  camped  in  this  place,  now,  just  within  the  city  walls 
of  Tiberias.  We  went  into  the  town  before  nightfall  and 
looked  at  its  people — we  cared  nothing  about  its  houses.  Its 
people  are  best  examined  at  a  distance.  They  are  particularly 
uncomely  Jews,  Arabs,  and  negroes.  Squalor  and  poverty  are 
the  pride  of  Tiberias.  The  young  women  wear  their  dower 
strung  upon  a  strong  wire  that  curves  downward  from  the  top 
of  the  head  to  the  jaw — Turkish  silver  coins  which  they  have 
raked  together  or  inherited.  Most  of  these  maidens  were  not 
wealthy,  but  some  few  had  been  very  kindly  dealt  with  by  for 
tune.  I  saw  heiresses  there  worth,  in  their  own  right — worth, 
well,  I  suppose  I  might  venture  to  say,  as  much  as  nine  dollars 
and  a  half.  But  such  cases  are  rare.  When  you  come  across 
one  of  these,  she  naturally  puts  on  airs.  She  will  not  ask  for 
bucksheesh.  She  will  not  even  permit  of  undue  familiarity. 
She  assumes  a  crushing  dignity  and  goes  on  serenely  prac 
ticing  with  her  fine-tooth  comb  and  quoting  poetry  just  the 
same  as  if  you  were  not  present  at  all.  Some  people  can  not 
stand  prosperity. 

They  say  that  the  long-nosed, lanky,  dyspeptic-looking  body- 
snatchers,  with  the  indescribable  hats  on,  and  a  long  curl 
dangling  down  in  front  of  each  ear,  are  the  old,  familiar,  self- 
righteous  Pharisees  we  read  of  in  the  Scriptures.  Yerily,  they 
look  it.  Judging  merely  by  their  general  style,  and  without 


506 


OLD     TIBERIAS. 


other  evidence,  one  might  easily  suspect  that  self-righteousness 
was  their  specialty. 

From  various  authorities  I  have  culled  information  concern 
ing  Tiberias.  It  was  built  by  Herod  Antipas,  the  murderer 
of  John  the  Baptist,  and  named  after  the  Emperor  Tiberius. 
It  is  believed  that  it  stands  upon  the  site  of  what  must  have 
been,  ages  ago,  a  city  of  considerable  architectural  pretensions, 
judging  by  the  fine  porphyry  pillars  that  are  scattered  through 
Tiberias  and  down  the  lake  shore  southward.  These  were 
fluted,  once,  and  yet,  although  the  stone  is  about  as  hard  as 
iron,  the  flutings  are  almost  worn  away.  These  pillars  are 


TIBERIAS,   AND    SEA   OF    UALILEE. 


small,  and  doubtless  the  edifices  they  adorned  were  distin 
guished  more  for  elegance  than  grandeur.  This  modern  town 
— Tiberias — is  only  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament ;  never 
in  the  Old. 

The  Sanhedrim  met  here  last,  and  for  three  hundred  years 


CONTRASTED     SCENERY.  507 

Tiberias  was  the  metropolis  of  the  Jews  in  Palestine.  It  is 
one  of  the  four  holy  cities  of  the  Israelites,  and  is  to  them  what 
Mecca  is  to  the  Mohammedan  and  Jerusalem  to  the  Christian. 
It  has  been  the  abiding  place  of  many  learned  and  famous 
Jewish  rabbins.  They  lie  buried  here,  and  near  them  lie  also 
twenty-five  thousand  of  their  faith  who  traveled  far  to  be  near 
them  while  they  lived  and  lie  with  them  when  they  died.  The 
great  Rabbi  Ben  Israel  spent  three  years  here  in  the  early  part 
of  the  third  century.  He  is  dead,  now. 

The  celebrated  Sea  of  Galilee  is  not  so  large  a  sea  as  Lake 
Tahoe*  by  a  good  deal — it  is  just  about  two-thirds  as  large. 
And  when  we  come  to  speak  of  beauty,  this  sea  is  no  more  to 
be  compared  to  Tahoe  than  a  meridian  of  longitude  is  to  a 
rainbow.  The  dim  waters  of  this  pool  can  not  suggest  the  lim 
pid  brilliancy  of  Tahoe  ;  these  low,  shaven,  yellow  hillocks  of 
rocks  and  sand,  so  devoid  of  perspective,  can  not  suggest  the 
grand  peaks  that  compass  Tahoe  like  a  wall,  and  whose  ribbed 
and  chasmed  fronts  are  clad  with  stately  pines  that  seem  to 
grow  small  and  smaller  as  they  climb,  till  one  might  fancy 
them  reduced  to  weeds  and  shrubs  far  upward,  wThere  they  join 
the  everlasting  snows.  Silence  and  solitude  brood  over  Tahoe ; 
and  silence  and  solitude  brood  also  over  this  lake  of  Genessa- 
ret.  But  the  solitude  of  the  one  is  as  cheerful  and  fascinating 
as  the  solitude  of  the  other  is  dismal  and  repellant. 

In  the  early  morning  one  watches  the  silent  battle  of  dawn 
and  darkness  upon  the  waters  of  Tahoe  with  a  placid  interest; 
but  when  the  shadows  sulk  away  and  one  by  one  the  hidden 
beauties  of  the  shore  unfold  themselves  in  the  full  splendor  of 
noon ;  when  the  still  surface  is  belted  like  a  rainbow  with  broad 
bars  of  blue  and  green  and  white,  half  the  distance  from  cir 
cumference  to  centre ;  when,  in  the  lazy  summer  afternoon,  he 
lies  in  a  boat,  far  cut  to  where  the  dead  blue  of  the  deep  water 
begins,  and  smokes  the  pipe  of  peace  and  idly  winks  at  the 

*  I  measure  all  lakes  by  Tahoe,  partly  because  I  am  far  more  familiar  with  it 
than  with  any  other,  and  partly  because  I  have  such  a  high  admiration  for  it  and 
such  a  world  of  pleasant  recollections  of  it,  that  it  is  very  nearly  impossible  for  mo 
to  speak  of  lakes  and  not  mention  it. 


508  CONTRASTED     SCENERY. 

distant  crags  and  patches  of  snow  from  under  his  cap-brim  ; 
when  the  boat  drifts  shoreward  to  the  white  water,  and  he  lolls 
over  the  gunwale  and  gazes  by  the  hour  down  through  the 
crystal  depths  and  notes  the  colors  of  the  pebbles  and  reviews 
the  finny  armies  gliding  in  procession  a  hundred  feet  below  ; 
when  at  night  he  sees  moon  and  stars,  mountain  ridges  feath 
ered  with  pines,  jutting  white  capes,  bold  promontories,  grand 
sweeps  of  rugged  scenery  topped  with  bald,  glimmering  peaks, 
all  magnificently  pictured  in  the  polished  mirror  of  the  lake, 
in  richest,  softest  detail,  the  tranquil  interest  that  was  born 
with  the  morning  deepens  and  deepens,  by  sure  degrees,  till  it 
culminates  at  last  in  resistless  fascination ! 

It  is  solitude,  for  birds  and  squirrels  on  the  shore  and  fishes 
in  the  water  are  all  the  creatures  that  are  near  to  make  it  oth 
erwise,  but  it  is  not  the  sort  of  solitude  to  make  one  dreary. 
Come  to  Galilee  for  that.  If  these  unpeopled  deserts,  these 
rusty  mounds  of  barrenness,  that  never,  never,  never  do  shake 
the  glare  from  their  harsh  outlines,  and  fade  and  faint  into 
vague  perspective  ;  that  melancholy  ruin  of  Capernaum  ;  this 
stupid  village  of  Tiberias,  slumbering  under  its  six  funereal 
plumes  of  palms ;  yonder  desolate  declivity  where  the  swine 
of  the  miracle  ran  down  into  the  sea,  and  doubtless  thought  it 
was  better  to  swallow  a  devil  or  two  and  get  drowned  into  the 
bargain  than  have  to  live  longer  in  such  a  place ;  this  cloud 
less,  blistering  sky  ;  this  solemn,  sailless,  tintless  lake,  reposing 
within  its  rhn  of  yellow  hills  and  low,  steep  banks,  and  look 
ing  just  as  expressionless  and  unpoetical  (when  we  leave  its 
sublime  history  out  of  the  question,)  as  any  metropolitan  res 
ervoir  in  Christendom — if  these  things  are  not  food  for  rock 
me  to  sleep,  mother,  none  exist,  I  think. 

But  I  should  not  offer  the  evidence  for  the  prosecution  and 
leave  the  defense  unheard.  Wm.  C.  Grimes  deposes  as  fol 
lows  : — 

"  We  had  taken  ship  to  go  over  to  the  other  side.  The  sea  was  not  more  than 
six  miles  wide.  Of  the  beauty  of  the  scene,  however,  I  can  not  say  enough,  nor 
can  I  imagine  where  those  travelers  carried  their  eyes  who  have  described  the 
scenery  of  the  lake  as  tame  or  uninteresting.  The  first  great  characteristic  of  it  is 


GRIMES'S     OPINION.  509 

the  deep  basin  in  which  it  lies.  This  is  from  three  to  four  hundred  feet  deep  on  all 
sides  except  at  the  lower  end,  and  the  sharp  slope  of  the  banks,  which  are  all  of 
the  richest  green,  is  broken  arid  diversified  by  the  wiidys  and  water-courses  which 
work  their  way  down  through  the  sides  of  the  basin,  forming  dark  chasms  or  light 
sunny  valleys.  Near  Tiberias  these  banks  are  rocky,  and  ancient  sepulchres  open 
in  them,  with  their  doors  toward  the  water.  They  selected  grand  spots,  as  did  the 
Egyptians  of  old,  for  burial  places,  as  if  they  designed  that  when  the  voice  of  God 
should  reach  the  sleepers,  they  should  walk  forth  and  open  their  eyes  on  scenes  of 
glorious  beauty.  On  the  east,  the  wild  and  desolate  mountains  contrast  finely  with 
the  deep  blue  lake;  and  toward  the  north,  sublime  and  majestic,  Hermon  looks 
down  on  the  sea,  lifting  his  white  crown  to  heaven  with  the  pride  of  a  hill  that  has 
seen  the  departing  footsteps  of  a  hundred  generations.  On  the  north-east  shore  of 
the  sea  was  a  single  tree,  and  this  is  the  only  tree  of  any  size  visible  from  the  wa 
ter  of  the  lake,  except  a  few  lonely  palms  in  the  city  of  Tiberias,  and  by  its  soli 
tary  position  attracts  more  attention  than  would  a  forest.  The  whole  appearance 
of  the  scene  is  precisely  what  we  would  expect  and  desire  the  scenery  of  Genes- 
saret  to  be,  grand  beauty,  but  quiet  calm.  The  very  mountains  are  calm." 

It  is  an  ingeniously  written  description,  and  well  calculated 
to  deceive.  But  if  the  paint  and  the  ribbons  and  the  flowers 
be  stripped  from  it,  a  skeleton  will  be  found  beneath. 

So  stripped,  there  remains  a  lake  six  miles  wide  and  neutral 
in  color  ;  with  steep  green  banks,  unrelieved  by  shrubbery ;  at 
one  end  bare,  unsightly  rocks,  with  (almost  invisible)  holes  in 
them  ,of  no  consequence  to  the  picture  ;  eastward,  "  wild  and 
desolate  mountains ;"  (low,  desolate  hills,  he  should  have 
said ;)  in  the  north,  a  mountain  called  Hermon,  with  snow  on 
it ;  peculiarity  of  the  picture,  "  calmness ;"  its  prominent  fea 
ture,  one  tree. 

No  ingenuity  could  make  such  a  picture  beautiful — to  one's 
actual  vision. 

I  claim  the  right  to  correct  misstatements,  and  have  so  cor 
rected  the  color  of  the  water  in  the  above  recapitulation.  The 
waters  of  Genessaret  are  of  an  exceedingl}7  mild  blue,  even 
from  a  high  elevation  and  a  distance  of  five  miles.  Close  at 
hand  (the  witness  was  sailing  on  the  lake,)  it  is  hardly  proper 
to  call  them  blue  at  all,  much  less  "deep"  blue.  I  wish  to 
state,  also,  not  as  a  correction,  but  as  matter  of  opinion,  that 
Mount  Hermon  is  not  a  striking  or  picturesque  mountain  by 
any  means,  being  too  near  the  height  of  its  immediate  neigh- 


510  C.     W.     E.'S     OPINION. 

bors  to  be  so.  That  is  all.  I  do  not  object  to  the  witness 
dragging  a  mountain  forty-five  miles  to  help  the  scenery  under 
consideration,  because  it  is  entirely  proper  to  do  it,  and  besides, 
the  picture  needs  it. 

"  C.  W.  E.,"  (of  "  Life  in  the  Holy  Land,")  deposes  as  fol 
lows  : — 

"  A  beautiful  sea  lies  unbosomed  among  the  Galilean  hills,  in  the  midst  of  that 
land  once  possessed  by  Zebulon  and  Naphtali,  Asher  and  Dan.  The  azure  of  the 
sky  penetrates  the  depths  of  the  lake,  and  the  waters  are  sweet  and  cool.  On  the 
west,  stretch  broad  fertile  plains ;  on  the  north  the  rocky  shores  rise  step  by  step 
until  in  the  far  distance  tower  the  snowy  heights  of  Hermon ;  on  the  east  through 
a  misty  veil, are  seen  the  high  plains  of  Perea,  which  stretch  away  in  rugged 
mountains  leading  the  mind  by  varied  paths  toward  Jerusalem  the  Holy.  Flowers 
bloom  in  this  terrestrial  paradise,  once  beautiful  and  verdant  with  waving  trees; 
singing  birds  enchant  the  ear ;  the  turtle-dove  soothes  with  its  soft  note ;  the  crest 
ed  lark  sends  up  its  song  toward  heaven,  and  the  grave  and  stately  stork  inspires 
the  mind  with  thought,  and  leads  it  on  to  meditation  and  repose.  Life  here  was 
once  idyllic,  charming;  here  were  once  no  rich,  no  poor,  no  high,  no  low.  It  was 
a  world  of  ease,  simplicity,  and  beauty;  now  it  is  a  scene  of  desolation  and 
misery." 

This  is  not  an  ingenious  picture.  It  is  the  worst  I  ever  saw. 
It  describes  in  elaborate  detail  what  it  terms  a  "  terrestrial 
paradise,"  and  closes  with  the  startling  information  that  this 
paradise  is  "  a  scene  of  desolation  and  misery" 

I  have  given  two  fair,  average  specimens  of  the  character  of 
the  testimony  offered  by  the  majority  of  the  writers  who  visit 
this  region.  One  says,  "  Of  the  beauty  of  the  scene  I  can  not 
say  enough,"  and  then  proceeds  to  cover  up  with  a  woof  of 
glittering  sentences  a  thing  which,  when  stripped  for  inspec 
tion,  proves  to  be  only  an  unobtrusive  basin  of  water,  some 
mountainous  desolation,  and  one  tree.  The  other,  after  a  con 
scientious  effort  to  build  a  terrestrial  paradise  out  of  the  same 
materials,  with  the  addition  of  a  "  grave  and  stately  stork," 
spoils  it  all  by  blundering  upon  the  ghastly  truth  at  the  last. 

Nearly  every  book  concerning  Galilee  and  its  lake  describes 
the  scenery  as  beautiful.  No — not  always  so  straightforward 
as  that.  Sometimes  the  impression  intentionally  conveyed  is 
that  it  is  beautiful,  at  the  same  time  that  the  author  is  careful 


DENOMINATIONAL     SIGHT-SEEING.  511 

not  to  say  that  it  is,  in  plain  Saxon.  But  a  careful  analysis  of 
these  descriptions  will  show  that  the  materials  of  which  they  are 
formed  are  not  individually  beautiful  and  can  not  be  wrought 
into  combinations  that  are  beautiful.  The  veneration  and  the 
affection  which  some  of  these  men  felt  for  the  scenes  they 
were  speaking  of,  heated  their  fancies  and  biased  their  judg 
ment  ;  but  the  pleasant  falsities  they  wrote  were  full  of  honest 
sincerity,  at  any  rate.  Others  wrote  as  they  did,  because  they 
feared  it  would  be  unpopular  to  write  otherwise.  Others  were 
hypocrites  and  deliberately  meant  to  deceive.  Any  of  them 
would  say  in  a  moment,  if  asked,  that  it  was  always  right  and 
always  best  to  tell  the  truth.  They  would  say  that,  at  any  rate, 
if  they  did  not  perceive  the  drift  of  the  question. 

But  why  should  not  the  truth  be  spoken  of  this  region  ?  Is 
the  truth  harmful  ?  Has  it  ever  needed  to  hide  its  face?  God 
made  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and  its  surroundings  as  they  are.  Is 
it  the  province  of  Mr.  Grimes  to  improve  upon  the  work  ? 

I  am  sure,  from  the  tenor  of  books  I  have  read,  that  many 
who  have  visited  this  land  in  years  gone  by,  were  Presbyte 
rians,  and  came  seeking  evidences  in  support  of  their  particular 
creed  ;  they  found  a  Presbyterian  Palestine,  and  they  had  al 
ready  made  up  their  minds  to  find  no  other,  though  possibly 
they  did  not  know  it,  being  blinded  by  their  zeal.  Others 
were  Baptists,  seeking  Baptist  evidences  and  a  Baptist  Pales 
tine.  Others  were  Catholics,  Methodists,  Episcopalians,  seek 
ing  evidences  indorsing  their  several  creeds,  and  a  Catholic,  a 
Methodist,  an  Episcopalian  Palestine.  Honest  as  these  men's 
intentions  may  have  been,  they  were  full  of  partialities  and 
prejudices,  they  entered  the  country  with  their  verdicts  already 
prepared,  and  they  could  no  more  write  dispassionately  and 
impartially  about  it  than  they  could  about  their  own  wives 
and  children.  Our  pilgrims  have  brought  their  verdicts  with 
them.  They  have  shown  it  in  their  conversation  ever  since 
we  left  Beirout.  I  can  almost  tell,  in  set  phrase,  what  they 
will  say  when  they  see  Tabor,  Nazareth,  Jericho  and  Jeru 
salem — because  I  have  the  books  they  will  u  smouch  "  their  ideas 
from.  These  authors  write  pictures  and  frame  rhapsodies,  and 


512  THE     SACRED    SEA    BY    NIGHT. 

lesser  men  follow  and  see  with  the  author's  eyes  instead  of 
their  own,  and  speak  with  his  tongue.  What  the  pilgrims 
said  at  Cesarea  Philippi  surprised  me  with  its  wisdom.  1 
found  it  afterwards  in  Robinson.  What  they  said  when 
Genessaret  burst  upon  their  vision,  charmed  me  with  its  grace. 
I  find  it  in  Mr.  Thompson's  "Land  and  the  Book."  They 
have  spoken  often,  in  happily  worded  language  which  never 
varied,  of  how  they  mean  to  lay  their  weary  heads  upon  a 
stone  at  Bethel,  as  Jacob  did,  and  close  their  dim  eyes,  and 
dream,  perchance,  of  angels  descending  out  of  heaven  on  a 
ladder.  It  was  very  pretty.  But  I  have  recognized  the  weary 
head  and  the  dim  eyes,  finally.  They  borrowed  the  idea — and 
the  words — and  the  construction — and  the  punctuation — from 
Grimes.  The  pilgrims  will  tell  of  Palestine,  when  they  get 
home,  not  as  it  appeared  to  them,  but  as  it  appeared  to  Thomp 
son  and  Robinson  and  Grimes — with  the  tints  varied  to  suit 
each  pilgrim's  creed. 

Pilgrims,  sinners  and  Arabs  are  all  abed,  now,  and  the  camp 
is  still.  Labor  in  loneliness  is  irksome.  Since  I  made  my  last 
few  notes,  I  have  been  sitting  outside  the  tent  for  half  an  hour. 
Night  is  the  time  to  see  Galilee.  Genessaret  under  these  lus 
trous  stars,  has  nothing  repulsive  about  it.  Genessaret  with 
the  glittering  reflections  of  the  constellations  flecking  its  sur 
face,  almost  makes  me  regret  that  I  ever  saw  the  rude  glare  of 
the  day  upon  it.  Its  history  and  its  associations  are  its  chief- 
est  charm,  in  any  eyes,  and  the  spells  they  weave  are  feeble  in 
the  searching  light  of  the  sun.  Tlien,  we  scarcely  feel  the  fet 
ters.  O«r  thoughts  wander  constantly  to  the  practical  con 
cerns  of  life,  and  refuse  to  dwell  upon  things  that  seem  vague 
and  unreal.  But  when  the  day  is  done,  even  the  most  unim- 
pressible  must  yield  to  the  dreamy  influences  of  this  tranquil 
starlight.  The  old  traditions  of  the  place  steal  upon  his  mem 
ory  and  haunt  his  reveries,  and  then  his  fancy  clothes  all 
sights  and  sounds  with  the  supernatural.  In  the  lapping  of 
the  waves  upon  the  beach,  he  hears  the  dip  of  ghostly  oars  ; 
in  the  secret  noises  of  the  night  he  hears  spirit  voices  ;  in  the 
soft  sweep  of  the  breeze,  the  rush  of  invisible  wings.  Phan- 


THE    SACRED    SEA     BY    NIGHT.  513 

torn  ships  are  on  the  sea,  the  dead  of  twenty  centuries  come 
forth  from  the  tombs,  and  in  the  dirges  of  the  night  wind  the 
songs  of  old  forgotten  ages  find  utterance  again. 

In  the  starlight,  Galilee  has  no  boundaries  but  the  broad 
compass  of  the  heavens,  and  is  a  theatre  meet  for  great  events ; 
meet  for  the  birth  of  a  religion  able  to  save  a  world ;  and 
meet  for  the  stately  Figure  appointed  to  stand  upon  its  stage 
and  proclaim  its  high  decrees.  But  in  the  sunlight,  one  says : 
Is  it  for  the  deeds  which  were  done  and  the  words  wThich  were 
spoken  in  this  little  acre  of  rocks  and  sand  eighteen  centuries 
gone,  that  the  bells  are  ringing  to-day  in  the  remote  islands  of 
the  sea  and  far  and  wide  over  continents  that  clasp  the  cir 
cumference  of  the  huge  globe  ? 

One  can  comprehend  it  only  when  night  has  hidden  all  in 
congruities  and  created  a  theatre  proper  for  so  grand  a  drama. 

33 


OHAPTEK  XLIX. 

WE  took  another  swim  in  the  Sea  of  Galilee  at  twilight 
yesterday,  and  another  at  sunrise  this  morning.  We 
have  not  sailed,  but  three  swims  are  equal  to  a  sail,  are  they 
not  ?  There  were  plenty  of  fish  visible  in  the  water,  but  we 
have  no  outside  aids  in  this  pilgrimage  but  "  Tent  Life  in  the 
Holy  Land,"  "  The  Land  and  the  Book,"  and  other  literature 
of  like  description — no  fishing-tackle.  There  were  no  fish  to 
be  had  in  the  village  of  Tiberias.  True,  we  saw  two  or  three 
vagabonds  mending  their  nets,  but  never  trying  to  catch  any 
thing  with  them. 

We  did  not  go  to  the  ancient  warm  baths  two  miles  below 
Tiberias.  I  had  no  desire  in  the  world  to  go  there.  This 
seemed  a  little  strange,  and  prompted  me  to  try  to  discover 
what  the  cause  of  this  unreasonable  indifference  was.  It  turned 
out  to  be  simply  because  Pliny  mentions  them.  I  have  con 
ceived  a  sort  of  unwarrantable  unfriendliness  toward  Pliny 
and  St.  Paul,  because  it  seems  as  if  I  can  never  ferret  out  a 
place  that  I  can  have  to  myself.  It  always  and  eternally 
transpires  that  St.  Paul  has  been  to  that  place,  and  Pliny  has 
"  mentioned  "  it. 

In  the  early  morning  we  mounted  and  started.  And  then  a 
weird  apparition  marched  forth  at  the  head  of  the  procession — 
a  pirate,  I  thought,  if  ever  a  pirate  dwelt  upon  land.  It  was 
a  tall  Arab,  as  swarthy  as  an  Indian  ;  young — say  thirty  years 
of  age.  On  his  head  he  had  closely  bound  a  gorgeous  yellow 
and  red  striped  silk  scarf,  whose  ends,  lavishly  fringed  with 
tassels,  hung  down  between  his  shoulders  and  dallied  with  the 


THE     APPARITION.  515 

wind  From  his  neck  to  his  knees,  in  ample  folds,  a  robe 
swept  down  that  was  a  very  star-spangled  banner  of  curved 
and  sinuous  bars  of  black  and  white.  Out  of  his  back,  some 
where,  apparently,  the  long  stem  of  a  chibouk  projected,  and 
reached  far  above  his  right  shoulder.  Athwart  his  back,  diag 
onally,  and  extending  high  above  his  left  shoulder,  was  an 
Arab  gun  of  Saladin's  time,  that  was  splendid  with  silver  pla 
ting  from  stock  clear  up  to  the  end  of  its  measureless  stretch 
of  barrel.  About  his  waist  was  bound  many  and  many  a  yard 
of  elaborately  figured  but  sadly  tarnished  stuff  that  came  from 
sumptuous  Persia,  and  among  the  baggy  folds  in  front  the  sun 
beams  glinted  from  a  formidable  battery  of  old  brass-mounted 
horse-pistols  and  the  gilded  hilts  of  blood-thirsty  knives. 
There  were  holsters  for  more  pistols  appended  to  the  wonder 
ful  stack  of  long-haired  goat-skins  and  Persian  carpets,  which 
the  man  had  been  taught  to  regard  in  the  light  of  a  saddle  ; 
and  down  among  the  pendulous  rank  of  vast  tassels  that 
swung  from  that  saddle,  and  clanging  against  the  iron  shovel 
of  a  stirrup  that  propped  the  warrior's  knees  up  toward  his 
chin,  was  a  crooked,  silver-clad  scimetar  of  such  awful  dimen 
sions  and  such  implacable  expression  that  no  man  might  hope 
to  look  upon  it  and  not  shudder.  The  fringed  and  bedizened 
prince  whose  privilege  it  is  to  ride  the  pony  and  lead  the  ele 
phant  into  a  country  village  is  poor  and  naked  compared  to 
this  chaos  of  paraphernalia,  and  the  happy  vanity  of  the  one 
is  the  very  poverty  of  satisfaction  compared  to  the  majestic 
serenity,  the  overwhelming  complacency  of  the  other. 

"  Who  is  this  ?  What  is  this?"  That  was  the  trembling  in 
quiry  all  down  the  line. 

"  Our  guard  !  From  Galilee  to  the  birthplace  of  the  Saviour, 
the  country  is  infested  with  fierce  Bedouins,  whose  sole  happi 
ness  it  is,  in  this  life,  to  cut  and  stab  and  mangle  and  murder 
unoffending  Christians.  Allah  be  with  us !" 

"  Then  hire  a  regiment !  Would  you  send  us  out  among 
these  desperate  hordes,  with  no  salvation  in  our  utmost  need 
but  this  old  turret  ?" 

The  dragoman  laughed — not  at  the  facetiousness  of  the  sim- 


516 


THE     APPARITION. 


ile,  for  verily,  that  guide  or  that  courier  or  that  dragoman 
never  yet  lived  upon  earth  who  had  in  him  the  faintest  appre 
ciation  of  a  joke,  even  though  that  joke  were  so  broad  and  so 
ponderous  that  if  it  fell  on  him  it  would  flatten  him  out  like  a 
postage  stamp — the  dragoman  laughed,  and  then,  emboldened 


\ 


THE   GUARD. 


by  some  thought  that  was  in  his  brain,  no  doubt,  proceeded  to 
extremities  and  winked. 

In  straits  like  these,  when  a  man  laughs,  it  is  encouraging ; 
when  he  winks,  it  is  positively  reassuring.  He  finally  inti 
mated  that  one  guard  would  be  sufficient  to  protect  us,  but  that 
that  one  was  an  absolute  necessity.  It  was  because  of  the 


INSPECTING     THE     APPARITION.  517 

moral  weight  his  awful  panoply  would  have  with  the  Bedouins. 
Then  I  said  we  didn't  want  any  guard  at  all.  If  one  fantastic 
vagabond  could  protect  eight  armed  Christians  and  a  pack  of 
Arab  servants  from  all  harm,  surely  that  detachment  could 
protect  themselves.  He  shook  his  head  doubtfully.  Then  I 
said,  just  think  of  how  it  looks — think  cf  now  it  would  read, 
to  self-reliant  Americans,  that  we  went  sneaking  through  this 
deserted  wilderness  under  the  protection  of  this  masquerading 
Arab,  who  wTould  break  his  neck  getting  out  of  the  country 
if  a  man  that  was  a  man  ever  started  after  him.  It  was  a 
mean,  low,  degrading  position.  Why  were  we  ever  told  to 
bring  navy  revolvers  with  us  if  we  had  to  be  protected  at  last 
by  this  infamous  star-spangled  scum  of  the  desert  ?  These  ap 
peals  were  vain — the  dragoman  only  smiled  and  shook  his 
head. 

I  rode  to  the  front  and  struck  up  an  acquaintance  with  King 
Solomon-in-all-his-glory,  and  got  him  to  show  me  his  lingering 
eternity  of  a  gun.  It  had  a  rusty  flint  lock  ;  it  was  ringed 
and  barred  and  plated  with  silver  from  end  to  end,  but  it  was 
as  desperately  out  of  the  perpendicular  as  are  the  billiard  cues 
of  '49  that  one  finds  yet  in  service  in  the  ancient  mining 
camps  of  California.  The  muzzle  was  eaten  by  the  rust  of 
centuries  into  a  ragged  filagree-work,  like  the  end  of  a  burnt- 
out  stove-pipe.  I  shut  one  eye  and  peered  within — it  was 
flaked  with  iron  rust  like  an  old  steamboat  boiler.  I  borrowed 
the  ponderous  pistols  and  snapped  them.  They  were  rusty  in 
side,  too — had  not  been  loaded  for  a  generation.  I  went  back, 
full  of  encouragement,  and  reported  to  the  guide,  and  asked 
him  to  discharge  this  dismantled  fortress.  It  came  out,  then. 
This  fellow  was  a  retainer  of  the  Sheik  of  Tiberias.  lie  was 
a  source  of  Government  revenue.  lie  was  to  the  Empire  of 
Tiberias  what  the  customs  are  to  America.  The  Sheik  im 
posed  guards  upon  travelers  and  charged  them  for  it.  It  is  a 
lucrative  source  of  emolument,  and  sometimes  brings  into  the 
national  treasury  as  much  as  thirty-five  or  forty  dollars  a  year. 

I  knew  the  warrior's  secret  nowr ;  I  knew  the  hollow  vanity 
of  his  rusty  trumpery,  and  despised  his  asinine  complacency. 


518  A    DISTINGUISHED     PANORAMA. 

I  told  on  him,  and  with  reckless  daring  the  cavalcade  rode 
straight  ahead  into  the  perilous  solitudes  of  the  desert,  and 
scorned  his  frantic  warnings  of  the  mutilation  and  death  that 
hovered  about  them  on  every  side. 

Arrived  at  an  elevation  of  twelve  hundred  feet  above  the 
lake,  (I  ought  to  mention  that  the  lake  lies  six  hundred  feet 
below  the  level  of  the  Mediterranean — no  traveler  ever  neglects 
to  flourish  that  fragment  of  news  in  his  letters,)  as  bald  and 
unthrilling  a  panorama  as  any  land  can  aiford,  perhaps,  was 
spread  out  before  us.  Yet  it  was  so  crowded  with  historical 
interest,  that  if  all  the  pages  that  have  been  written  about  it 
were  spread  upon  its  surface,  they  would  flag  it  from  horizon 
to  horizon  like  a  pavement.  Among  the  localities  comprised 
in  this  view,  were  Mount  Ilermon ;  the  hills  that  border  Cesa- 
rea  Philippi,  Dan,  the  Sources  of  the  Jordan  and  the  Waters 
ofMerom;  Tiberias;  the  Sea  of  Galilee ;  Joseph's  Pit;  Caper 
naum  ;  Bethsaida ;  the  supposed  scenes  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  the  feeding  of  the  multitudes  and  the  miraculous 
draught  of  fishes  ;  the  declivity  down  which  the  swine  ran  to 
the  sea  ;  the  entrance  and  the  exit  of  the  Jordan  ;  Safed,  "the 
city  set  upon  a  hill,"  one  of  the  four  holy  cities  of  the  Jews, 
and  the  place  where  they  believe  the  real  Messiah  will  appear 
when  he  comes  to  redeem  the  world  ;  part  of  the  battle-field 
of  Hattin,  where  the  knightly  Crusaders  fought  their  last  fight, 
and  in  a  blaze  of  glory  passed  from  the  stage  and  ended  their 
splendid  career  forever ;  Mount  Tabor,  the  traditional  scene  of 
the  Lord's  Transfiguration.  And  down  toward  the  southeast 
lay  a  landscape  that  suggested  to  my  mind  a  quotation  (imper 
fectly  remembered,  no  doubt :) 

"The  Ephraimites,  not  being  called  upon  to  share  in  the  rich  spoils  of  the  Am- 
monitish  war,  assembled  a  mighty  host  to  fight  against  Jeptha,  Judge  of  Israel ; 
who,  being  apprised  of  their  approach,  gathered  together  the  men  of  Israel  and 
gave  them  battle  and  put  them  to  flight.  To  make  his  victory  the  more  secure,  he 
stationed  guards  at  the  different  fords  and  passages  of  the  Jordan,  with  instructions 
to  let  none  pass  who  could  not  say  Shibboleth.  The  Ephraimites,  being  of  a  dif 
ferent  tribe,  could  not  frame  to  pronounce  the  word  aright,  but  called  it  Sibboleth, 
which  proved  them  enemies  and  cost  them  their  lives ;  wherefore,  forty  and  two 
thousand  fell  at  the  different  fords  and  passages  of  the  Jordan  that  day." 


LAST  BATTLE  OF  THE  CRUSADES.       519 

We  jogged  along  peacefully  over  the  great  caravan  route 
from  Damascus  to  Jerusalem  and  Egypt,  past  Lubia  and  other 
Syrian  hamlets,  perched,  in  the  unvarying  style,  upon  the  sum 
mit  of  steep  mounds  and  hills,  and  fenced  round  about  with 
giant  cactuses,  (the  sign  of  worthless  land,)  with  prickly  pears 
upon  them  like  hams,  and  came  at  last  to  the  battle-field  of 
Hattin. 

It  is  a  grand,  irregular  plateau,  and  looks  as  if  it  might  have 
been  created  for  a  battle-field.  Here  the  peerless  Saladin  met 
the  Christian  host  some  seven  hundred  years  ago,  and  broke 
their  power  in  Palestine  for  all  time  to  come.  There  had  long 
been  a  truce  between  the  opposing  forces,  but  according  to  the 
Guide-Book,  Raynauld  of  Chatillon,  Lord  of  Kerak,  broke  it 
by  plundering  a  Damascus  caravan,  and  refusing  to  give  up 
either  the  merchants  or  their  goods  when  Saladin  demanded 
them.  This  conduct  of  an  insolent  petty  chieftain  stung  the 
Sultan  to  the  quick,  and  he  swore  that  he  would  slaughter 
Raynauld  with  his  own  hand,  no  matter  how,  or  when,  or 
where  he  found  him.  Both  armies  prepared  for  war.  Under 
the  weak  King  of  Jerusalem  was  the  very  flower  of  the  Chris 
tian  chivalry.  He  foolishly  compelled  them  to  undergo  a  long, 
exhausting  march,  in  the  scorching  sun,  and  then,  without 
water  or  other  refreshment,  ordered  them  to  encamp  in  this 
open  plain.  The  splendidly  mounted  masses  of  Moslem  soldiers 
swept  round  the  north  end  of  Genessaret,  burning  and  destroy 
ing  as  they  came,  and  pitched  their  camp  in  front  of  the  oppo 
sing  lines.  At  dawn  the  terrific  fight  began.  Surrounded  on 
all  sides  by  the  Sultan's  swarming  battalions,  the  Christian 
Knights  fought  on  without  a  hope  for  their  lives.  They  fought 
with  desperate  valor,  but  to  no  purpose ;  the  odds  of  heat  and 
numbers,  and  consuming  thirst,  were  too  great  against  them. 
Towards  the  middle  of  the  day  the  bravest  of  their  band  cut 
their  way  through  the  Moslem  ranks  and  gained  the  summit 
of  a  little  hill,  and  there,  hour  after  hour,  they  closed  around 
the  banner  of  the  Cross,  and  beat  back  the  charging  squadrons 
of  the  enemy. 

But  the  doom  of  the  Christian  power  was  sealed.     Sunset 


520  MOUNT    TABOR. 

found  Saladin  Lord  of  Palestine,  the  Christian  chivalry  strewn 
in  heaps  upon  the  field,  and  the  King  of  Jerusalem,  the  Grand 
Master  of  the  Templars,  and  Kajnauld  of  Chatillon,  captives 
in  the  Sultan's  tent.  Saladin  treated  two  of  the  prisoners  with 
princely  courtesy,  and  ordered  refreshments  to  be  set  before 
them.  When  the  King  handed  an  iced  Sherbet  to  Chatillon, 
the  Sultan  said,  "  It  is  thou  that  givest  it  to  him,  not  I."  He 
remembered  his  oath,  and  slaughtered  the  hapless  Knight  of 
Chatillon  with  his  own  hand. 

It  was  hard  to  realize  that  this  silent  plain  had  once  re 
sounded  with  martial  music  and  trembled  to  the  tramp  of 
armed  men.  It  was  hard  to  people  this  solitude  with  rushing 
columns  of  cavalry,  and  stir  its  torpid  pulses  with  the  shouts 
of  victors,  the  shrieks  of  the  wounded,  and  the  flash  of  banner 
and  steel  above  the  surging  billows  of  war.  A  desolation  is 
here  that  not  even  imagination  can  grace  with  the  pomp  of  life 
and  action. 

We  reached  Tabor  safely,  and  considerably  in  advance 
of  that  old  iron-clad  swindle  of  a  guard.  We  never  saw  a 
human  being  on  the  whole  route,  much  less  lawless  hordes  of 
Bedouins.  Tabor  stands  solitary  and  alone,  a  giant  sentinel 
above  the  Plain  of  Esdraelon.  It  rises  some  fourteen  hundred 
feet  above  the  surrounding  level,  a  green,  wooden  cone,  sym 
metrical  and  full  of  grace — a  prominent  landmark,  and  one 
that  is  exceedingly  pleasant  to  eyes  surfeited  with  the  -repul 
sive  monotony  of  desert  Syria.  We  climbed  the  steep  path  to 
its  summit,  through  breezy  glades  of  thorn  and  oak.  The  view 
presented  from  its  highest  peak  was  almost  beautiful.  Below, 
was  the  broad,  level  plain  of  Esdraelon,  checkered  with  fields 
like  a  chess-board,  and  full  as  smooth  and  level,  seemingly ; 
dotted  about  its  borders  with  white,  compact  villages,  and 
faintly  penciled,  far  and  near,  with  the  curving  lines  of  roads 
and  trails.  When  it  is  robed  in  the  fresh  verdure  of  spring,  it 
must  form  a  charming  picture,  even  by  itself.  Skirting  its 
southern  border  rises  "  Little  Ilermon,"  over  whose  summit  a 
glimpse  of  Gilboa  is  caught.  Nain,  famous  for  the  raising  of 
the  widow's  son,  and  Endor,  as  famous  for  the  performances 


VIEW     FROM     TABOR. 


521 


of  her  witch,  arc  in  view.  To  the  eastward  lies  the  Valley  of 
the  Jordan  and  beyond  it  the  mountains  of  Gilead.  Westward 
is  Mount  Carmel.  Ilcrinon  in  the  north — the  table-lands  of 
Bashan — Safed,  the  holy  city,  gleaming  white  upon  a  tall  spur 
of  the  mountains  of  Lebanon — a  steel-blue  corner  of  the  Sea 
of  Galilee — saddle-peaked  Ilattin,  traditional  "  Mount  of  Beat 
itudes  "  and 
mute  witness 
of  the  last 
brave  fight 
of  tli  e  Crusa 
ding  host  for 
Holy  Cross — 
these  fill  up 
the  picture. 

To  glance 
at  the  salient 
features  of 
this  landscape 
through  the 
p  i  c  t  uresque 

framework  of  a  ragged  and  ruined  stone  window-arch  of  the 
time  of  Christ,  thus  hiding  from  sight  all  that  is  unattractive, 
is  to  secure  to  yourself  a  pleasure  worth  climbing  the  moun 
tain  to  enjoy.  One  must  stand  on  his  head  to  get  the  best 
effect  in  a  fine  sunset,  and  set  a  landscape  in  a  bold,  strong 
framework  that  is  very  close  at  hand,  to  bring  out  all  its  beau 
ty.  One  learns  this  latter  truth  never  more  to  forget  it,  in  that 
mimic  land  of  enchantment,  the  wonderful  garden  of  my  lord 
the  Count  Pallavicini,  near  Genoa.  You  go  wandering  for 
hours  among  hills  and  wooded  glens,  artfully  contrived  to 
leave  the  impression  that  Nature  shaped  them  and  not  man ; 
following  winding  paths  and  coming  suddenly  upon  leaping 
cascades  and  rustic  bridges ;  finding  sylvan  lakes  where  you 
expected  them  not ;  loitering  through  battered  mediasval  cas 
tles  in  miniature  that  seem  hoary  with  age  and  yet  were  built 
a  dozen  years  ago ;  meditating  over  ancient  crumbling  tombs, 


MOUNT  TABOR. 


522  A    WONDERFUL    GARDEN. 

whose  marble  columns  were  marred  and  broken  purposely  by 
the  modern  artist  that  made  them  ;  stumbling  unawares  upon 
toy  palaces,  wrought  of  rare  and  costly  materials,  and  again 
upon  a  peasant's  hut,  whose  dilapidated  furniture  would  never 
suggest  that  it  was  made  so  to  order ;  sweeping  round  and 
round  in  the  midst  of  a  forest  on  an  enchanted  wooden  horse 
that  is  moved  by  some  invisible  agency ;  traversing  Roman 
roads  and  passing  under  majestic  triumphal  arches ;  resting  in 
quaint  bowers  where  unseen  spirits  discharge  jets  of  water  on 
you  from  every  possible  direction,  and  where  even  the  flowers 
you  touch  assail  you  with  a  shower ;  boating  on  a  subterranean 
lake  among  caverns  and  arches  royally  draped  with  clustering 
stalactites,  and  passing  out  into  open  day  upon  another  lake, 
which  is  bordered  with  sloping  banks  of  grass  and  gay  with 
patrician  barges  that  swim  at  anchor  in  the  shadoAv  of  a  min 
iature  marble  temple  that  rises  out  of  the  clear  water  and 
glasses  its  white  statues,  its  rich  capitals  and  fluted  columns 
in  the  tranquil  depths.  So,  from  marvel  to  marvel  you  have 
drifted  on,  thinking  all  the  time  that  the  one  last  seen  must  be 
the  chiefest.  And,  verily,  the  chiefest  wonder  is  reserved  until 
the  last,  but  you  do  not  see  it  until  you  step  ashore,  and  pass 
ing  through  a  wilderness  of  rare  flowers,  collected  from  every 
corner  of  the  earth,  you  stand  at  the  door  of  one  more  mimic 
temple.  Right  in  this  place  the  artist  taxed  his  genius  to  the 
utmost,  and  fairly  opened  the  gates  of  fairy  land.  You  look 
through  an  unpretending  pane  of  glass,  stained  yellow ;  the 
first  thing  you  see  is  a  mass  of  quivering  foliage,  ten  short  steps 
before  you,  in  the  midst  of  which  is  a  ragged  opening  like  a 
gateway — a  thing  that  is  common  enough  in  nature,  and  not 
apt  to  excite  suspicions  of  a  deep  human  design — and  above 
the  bottom  of  the  gateway,  project,  in  the  most  careless  way, 
a  few  broad  tropic  leaves  and  brilliant  flowers.  All  of  a  sud 
den,  through  this  bright,  bold  gateway,  you  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  faintest,  softest,  richest  picture  that  ever  graced  the 
dream  of  a  dying  Saint,  since  John  saw  the  New  Jerusalem 
glimmering  above  the  clouds  of  Heaven.  A  broad  sweep  of 
sea,  flecked  with  careening  sails  ;  a  sharp,  jutting  cape,  and  a 


A    NOTED    BATTLE-FIELD.  523 

lofty  lighthouse  on  it ;  a  sloping  lawn  behind  it ;  beyond,  a 
portion  of  the  old  "  city  of  palaces,"  with  its  parks  and  hills 
and  stately  mansions  ;  beyond  these,  a  prodigious  mountain, 
with  its  strong  outlines  sharply  cut  against  ocean  and  sky ;  and 
over  all,  vagrant  shreds  and  flakes  of  cloud,  floating  in  a  sea 
of  gold.  The  ocean  is  gold,  the  city  is  gold,  the  meadow,  the 
mountain,  the  sky — every  thing  is  golden — rich,  and  mellow, 
and  dreamy  as  a  vision  of  Paradise.  No  artist  could  put  upon 
canvas  its  entrancing  beauty,  and  yet,  without  the  yellow 
glass,  and  the  carefully  contrived  accident  of  a  framework  that' 
cast  it  into  enchanted  distance  and  shut  out  from  it  all  unat 
tractive  features,  it  was  not  a  picture  to  fall  into  ecstacies  over. 
Such  is  life,  and  the  trail  of  the  serpent  is  over  us  all. 

There  is  nothing  for  it  now  but  to  come  back  to  old  Tabor, 
though  the  subject  is  tiresome  enough,  and  I  can  not  stick  to 
it  for  wandering  off  to  scenes  that  are  pleasanter  to  remember. 
I  think  I  will  skip,  any  how.  There  is  nothing  about  Tabor 
(except  we  concede  that  it  was  the  scene  of  the  Transfigura 
tion,)  but  some  gray  old  ruins,  stacked  up  there  in  all  ages  of 
the  world  from  the  days  of  stout  Gideon  and  parties  that 
flourished  thirty  centuries  ago  to  the  fresh  yesterday  of  Cru 
sading  times.  It  has  it's  Greek  Convent,  and  the  coffee  there 
is  good,  but  never  a  splinter  of  the  true  cross  or  bone  of  a  hal 
lowed  saint  to  arrest  the  idle  thoughts  of  worldlings  and  turn 
them  into  graver  channels.  A  Catholic  church  is  nothing  to 
me  that  has  no  relics. 

The  plain  of  Esdraelon — "the  battle-field  of  the  nations" — 
only  sets  one  to  dreaming  of  Joshua,  and  Benhadad,  and  Saul, 
and  Gideon  ;  Tamerlane,  Tancred,  Cceur  de  Lion,  and  Saladin ; 
the  warrior  Kings  of  Persia,  Egypt's  heroes,  and  Napoleon— 
for  they  all  fought  here.  If  the  magic  of  the  moonlight  could 
summon  from  the  graves  of  forgotten  centuries  and  many  lands 
the  countless  myriads  that  have  battled  on  this  wide,  far- 
reaching  floor,  and  array  them  in  the  thousand  strange  cos 
tumes  of  their  hundred  nationalities,  and  send  the  vast  host 
sweeping  down  the  plain,  splendid  witli  plumes  and  banners 
and  glittering  lances,  I  could  stay  here  an  age  to  see  the  phan- 


524 


HOME  OF  DEBORAH,  THE  PROPHETESS. 


torn  pageant.  But  the  magic  of  the  moonlight  is  a  vanity  and 
a  fraud ;  and  whoso  putteth  his  trust  in  it  shall  suffer  sorrow 
and  disappointment. 

Down  at  the  foot  of  Tabor,  and  just  at  the  edge  of  the  sto 
ried  Plain  of  Esdraelon,  is  the  insignificant  village  of  Deburieh, 
where  Deborah,  prophetess  of  Israel,  lived.  It  is  just  like 
Magdala. 


CHAPTEE    L. 

« 

~TT7~E  descended  from  Mount  Tabor,  crossed  a  deep  ravine, 
V  V  aud  followed  a  hilly,  rocky  road  to  Nazareth — distant 
two  hours.  All  distances  in  the  East  are  measured  by  hours, 
not  miles.  A  good  horse  will  walk  three  miles  an  hour  over 
nearly  any  kind  of  a  road  ;  therefore,  an  hour,  here,  always 
stands  for  three  miles.  This  method  of  computation  is  both 
ersome  and  annoying ;  and  until  one  gets  thoroughly  accus 
tomed  to  it,  it  carries  no  intelligence  to  his  mind  until  he  has 
stopped  and  translated  the  pagan  hours  into  Christian  miles, 
just  as  people  do  with  the  spoken  words  of  a  foreign  language 
they  are  acquainted  with,  but  not  familiarly  enough  to  catch 
the  meaning  in  a  moment.  Distances  traveled  by  human  feet 
are  also  estimated  by  hours  and  minutes,  though  I  do  not 
know  what  the  base  of  the  calculation  is.  In  Constantinople 
you  ask,  "  How  far  is  it  to  the  Consulate  ?"  and  they  answer, 
"  About  ten  minutes."  "  How  far  is  it  to  the  Lloyds'  Agency  ?" 
"  Quarter  of  an  hour."  "  How  far  is  it  to  the  lower  bridge  ?" 
"Four  minutes."  I  can  not  be  positive  about  it,  but  I  think 
that  there,  when  a  man  orders  a  pair  of  pantaloons,  he  says  he 
wants  them  a  quarter  of  a  minute  in  the  legs  and  nine  seconds 
around  the  waist. 

Two  hours  from  Tabor  to  Nazareth — and  as  it  was  an  un 
commonly  narrow,  crooked  trail,  we  necessarily  met  all  the 
camel  trains  and  jackass  caravans  between  Jericho  and  Jack 
sonville  in  that  particular  place  and  nowhere  else.  The  don 
keys  do  not  matter  so  much,  because  they  are  so  small  that 
you  can  jump  your  horse  over  them  if  he  is  an  animal  of  spirit, 


526  MORE     ENLIGHTENMENT. 

but  a  camel  is  not  jumpable.  A  camel  is  as  tall  as  any  ordi 
nary  dwelling-house  in  Syria — which  is  to  say  a  camel  is  from 
one  to  two,  and  sometimes  nearly  three  feet  taller  than  a  good- 
sized  man.  In  this  part  of  the  country  his  load  is  oftenest  in 
the  shape  of  colossal  sacks — one  on  each  side.  •  He  and  his 
cargo  take  up  as  much  room  as  a  carriage.  Think  of  meeting 
this  style  of  obstruction  in  a  narrow  trail.  The  camel  would 
not  turn  out  for  a  king.  He  stalks  serenely  along,  bringing 
his  cushioned  stilts  forward  with  the  long,  regular  swring  of  a 
pendulum,  and  whatever  is  in  the  way  must  get  out  of  the  wray 
peaceably,  or  be  wiped  out  forcibly  by  the  bulky  sacks.  It 
was  a  tiresome  ride  to  us,  and  perfectly  exhausting  to  the 
horses.  We  were  compelled  to  jump  over  upwrards  of  eighteen 
hundred  donkeys,  and  only  one  person  in  the  party  was  un 
seated  less  than  sixty  times  by  the  camels.  This  seems  like  a 
powerful  statement,  but  the  poet  has  said,  "  Things  are  not 
what  they  seem."  I  can  not  think  of  any  thing,  now,  more 
certain  to  make  one  shudder,  than  to  have  a  soft-footed  camel 
sneak  up  behind  him  and  touch  him  on  the  ear  with  its  cold, 
flabby  under-lip.  A  camel  did  this  for  one  of  the  boys,  who 
was  drooping  over  his  saddle  in  a  brown  study.  He  glanced 
up  and  saw  the  majestic  apparition  hovering  above  him,  and 
made  frantic  efforts  to  get  out  of  the  way,  but  the  camel 
reached  out  and  bit  him  on  the  shoulder  before  he  accom 
plished  it.  This  was  the  only  pleasant  incident  of  the  jour 
ney. 

At  Nazareth  we  camped  in  an  olive  grove  near  the  Virgin 
Mary's  fountain,  and  that  wonderful  Arab  "guard"  came  to 
collect  some  bucksheesh  for  his  "  services  "  in  following  us  from 
Tiberias  and  warding  off  invisible  dangers  with  the  terrors  of 
his  armament.  The  dragoman  had  paid  his  master,  but  that 
counted  as  nothing — if  you  hire  a  man  to  sneeze  for  you,  here, 
and  another  man  chooses  to  help  him,  you  have  got  to  pay 
both.  They  do  nothing  whatever  without  pay.  Ho\v  it  must 
have  surprised  these  people  to  hear  the  way  of  salvation  offered 
to  them  "  without  money  and  without  price"  If  the  manners, 
the  people  or  the  customs  of  this  country  have  changed  since 


GROTTO     OF    THE    ANNUNCIATION.  527 

the  Saviour's  time,  the  figures  and  metaphors  of  the  Bible  are 
not  the  evidences  to  prove  it  by. 

"We  entered  the  great  Latin  Convent  which  is  built  over  the 
traditional  dwelling-place  of  the  Holy  Family.  We  went 
down  a  flight  of  fifteen  steps  below  the  ground  level,  and  stood 
in  a  small  chapel  tricked  out  with  tapestry  hangings,  silver 
lamps,  and  oil  paintings.  A  spot  marked  by  a  cross,  in  the 
marble  floor,  under  the  altar,  was  exhibited  as  the  place  made 
forever  holy  by  the  feet  of  the  Virgin  when  she  stood  up  to 
receive  the  message  of  the  angel.  So  simple,  so  unpretending 
a  locality,  to  be  the  scene  of  so  mighty  an  event !  The  very 
scene  of  the  Annunciation — an  event  which  has  been  com 
memorated  by  splendid  shrines  and  august  temples  all  over  the 
civilized  world,  and  one  which  the  princes  of  art  have  made  it 
their  loftiest  ambition  to  picture  worthily  on  their  canvas  ;  a 
spot  whose  history  is  familiar  to  the  very  children  of  every 
house,  and  city,  and  obscure  hamlet  of  the  furthest  lands  of 
Christendom  ;  a  spot  which  myriads  of  men  would  toil  across 
the  breadth  of  a  world  to  see,  would  consider  it  a  priceless 
privilege  to  look  upon.  It  was  easy  to  think  these  thoughts. 
But  it  was  not  easy  to  bring  myself  up  to  the  magnitude  of  the 
situation.  I  could  sit  off  several  thousand  miles  and  imagine 
the  angel  appearing,  with  shadowy  wings  and  lustrous  counte 
nance,  and  note  the  glory  that  streamed  downward  upon  the 
Virgin's  head  while  the  message  from  the  Throne  of  God  fell 
upon  her  ears — any  one  can  do  that,  beyond  the  ocean,  but  few 
can  do  it  here.  I  saw  the  little  recess  from  which  the  angel 
stepped,  but  could  not  fill  its  void.  The  angels  that  I  know 
are  creatures  of  unstable  fancy — they  will  not  fit  in  niches  of 
substantial  stone.  Imagination  labors  best  in  distant  fields.  I 
doubt  if  any  man  can  stand  in  the  Grotto  of  the  Annunciation 
and  people  with  the  phantom  images  of  his  mind  its  too  tan 
gible  walls  of  stone. 

They  showed  us  a  broken  granite  pillar,  depending  from  the 
roof,  which  they  said  was  hacked  in  two  by  the  Moslem  con 
querors  of  Nazareth,  in  the  vain  hope  of  pulling  down  the 
sanctuary.  But  the  pillar  remained  miraculously  suspended 


528  NOTED     GROTTOES    IN     GENERAL. 

in  the  air,  and,  unsupported  itself,  supported  then  and  still 
supports  the  roof.  By  dividing  this  statement  up  among  eight, 
it  was  found  not  difficult  to  believe  it. 

These  gifted  Latin  monks  never  do  any  thing  by  halves.  If 
they  were  to  show  you  the  Brazen  Serpent  that  was  elevated 
in  the  wilderness,  you  could  depend  upon  it  that  they  had  on 
hand  the  pole  it  was  elevated  on  also,  and  even  the  hole  it 
stood  in.  They  have  got  the  "  Grotto  "  of  the  Annunciation 
here ;  and  just  as  convenient  to  it  as  one's  throat  is  to  his 
mouth,  they  have  also  the  Virgin's  Kitchen,  and  even  her  sit 
ting-room,  where  she  and  Joseph  watched  the  infant  Saviour 
play  with  Hebrew  toys  eighteen  hundred  years  ago.  All  un 
der  one  roof,  and  all  clean,  spacious,  comfortable  "  grottoes." 
It  seems  curious  that  personages  intimately  connected  with  the 
Holy  Family  always  lived  in  grottoes — in  Nazareth,  in  Beth 
lehem,  in  imperial  Ephesus — and  yet  nobody  else  in  their  day 
and  generation  thought  of  doing  any  thing  of  the  kind.  If 
they  ever  did,  their  grottoes  are  all  gone,  and  I  suppose  we 
ought  to  wonder  at  the  peculiar  marvel  of  the  preservation  of 
these  I  speak  of.  When  the  Virgin  fled  from  Herod's  wrath, 
she  hid  in  a  grotto  in  Bethlehem,  and  the  same  is  there  to  this 
day.  The  slaughter  of  the  innocents  in  Bethlehem  was  done 
in  a  grotto  ;  the  Saviour  was  born  in  a  grotto — both  are  shown 
to  pilgrims  yet.  It  is  exceedingly  strange  that  these  tremen 
dous  events  all  happened  in  grottoes — and  exceedingly  fortu 
nate,  likewise,  because  the  strongest  houses  must  crumble  to 
ruin  in  time,  but  a  grotto  in  the  living  rock  will  last  forever. 
It  is  an  imposture — this  grotto  stuff — but  it  is  one  that  all  men 
ought  to  thank  the  Catholics  for.  Wherever  they  ferret  out  a 
lost  locality  made  holy  by  some  Scriptural  event,  they  straight 
way  build  a  massive — almost  imperishable — church  there,  and 
preserve  the  memory  of  that  locality  for  the  gratification  of 
future  generations.  If  it  had  been  left  to  Protestants  to  do 
this  most  worthy  work,  we  would  not  even  know  where  Jeru 
salem  is  to-day,  and  the  man  who  could  go  and  put  his  finger 
on  Nazareth  would  be  too  wise  for  this  world.  The  world 
owes  the  Catholics  its  good  will  even  for  the  happy  rascality 


SACRED     RELICS.  529 

of  hewing  out  these  bogus  grottoes  in  the  rock  ;  for  it  is  infi 
nitely  more  satisfactory  to  look  at  a  grotto,  where  people  have 
faithfully  believed  for  centuries  that  the  Virgin  once  lived, 
than  to  have  to  imagine  a  dwelling-place  for  her  somewhere, 
any  where,  nowhere,  loose  and  at  large  all  over  this  town  of 
Nazareth.  There  is  too  large  a  scope  of  country.  The  imag 
ination  can  not  work.  There  is  no  one  particular  spot  to  chain 
your  eye,  rivet  your  interest,  and  make  you  think.  The  mem 
ory  of  the  Pilgrims  can  not  perish  while  Plymouth  Rock 
remains  to  us.  The  old  monks  are  wise.  They  knowr  how  to 
drive  a  stake  through  a  pleasant  tradition  that  will  hold  it  to 
its  place  forever. 

We  visited  the  places  where  Jesus  worked  for  fifteen  years 
as  a  carpenter,  and  where  he  attempted  to  teach  in  the  syna 
gogue  and  wras  driven  out  by  a  mob.  Catholic  chapels  stand 
upon  these  sites  and  protect  the  little  fragments  of  the  ancient 
wralls  which  remain.  Our  pilgrims  broke  off  specimens.  We 
visited,  also,  a  new  chapel,  in  the  midst  of  the  town,  which  is 
built  around  a  boulder  some  twrelve  feet  long  by  four  feet 
thick  ;  the  priests  discovered,  a  few  years  ago,  that  the  disciples 
had  sat  upon  this  rock  to  rest,  once,  when  they  had  walked  up 
from  Capernaum.  They  hastened  to  preserve  the  relic.  Helics 
are  very  good  property.  Travelers  are  expected  to  pay  for 
seeing  them,  and  they  do  it  cheerfully.  We  like  the  idea. 
One's  conscience  can  never  be  the  worse  for  the  knowledge 
that  he  has  paid  his  way  like  a  man.  Our  pilgrims  would  have 
liked  very  well  to  get  out  their  lampblack  and  stencil-plates 
and  paint  their  names  on  that  rock,  together  with  the  names 
of  the  villages  they  hail  from  in  America,  but  the  priests  per 
mit  nothing  of  that  kind.  To  speak  the  strict  truth,  however, 
our  party  seldom  offend  in  that  wray,  though  we  have  men  in 
the  ship  who  never  lose  an  opportunity  to  do  it.  Our  pilgrims' 
chief  sin  is  their  lust  for  "  specimens."  I  suppose  that  by  this 
time  they  know  the  dimensions  of  that  rock  to  an  inch,  and  its 
weight  to  a  ton  ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  charge  that  they 
will  go  back  there  to-night  and  try  to  carry  it  off. 

This  "  Fountain  of  the  Virgin  "  is  the  one  which  tradition 

34 


530  QUESTIONABLE     FEMALE     BEAUTY. 

says  Mary  used  to  get  water  from,  twenty  times  a  day,  when 
she  was  a  girl,  and  bear  it  away  in  a  jar  upon  her  head.  The 
water  streams  through  faucets  in  the  face  of  a  wall  of  ancient 
masonry  which  stands  removed  from  the  houses  of  the  village. 
The  vouno;  ffirls  of  Nazareth  still  collect  about  it  bv  the  dozen 

«/  O    0  «' 

and  keep  up  a  riotous  laughter  and  sky -larking.    The  Nazarene 


FOUNTAIN   OF   THE   VIRGIN. 


girls  are  homely.  Some  of  them  have  large,  lustrous  eyes,  but 
none  of  them  have  pretty  faces.  These  girls  wear  a  single 
garment,  usually,  and  it  is  loose,  shapeless,  of  undecided  color ; 
it  is  generally  out  of  repair,  too.  They  wear,  from  crown  to 
jaw,  curious  strings  of  old  coins,  after  the  manner  of  the 
belles  of  Tiberias,  and  brass  jewelry  upon  their  wrists  and  in 
their  ears.  They  wear  no  shoes  and  stockings.  They  are  the 
most  human  girls  we  have  found  in  the  country  yet,  and  the 
best  natured.  But  there  is  no  question  that  these  picturesque 
maidens  sadly  lack  comeliness. 


PILGRIM-PLAGIARIZING. 


531 


A  pilgrim — the  "Enthusiast  " — said  :  "  See  that  tall,  grace 
ful  girl !  look  at  the  Madonna-like  beauty  of  her  countenance  !" 

Another  pilgrim  came  along  presently  and  said  :  "Observe 
that  tall,  graceful  girl ;  what  queenly  Madonna-like  graceful 
ness  of  beauty  is  in  her  countenance." 

I  said  :  "  She  is  not  tall,  she  is  short ;  she  is  not  beautiful, 
she  is  home 
ly  ;  she  is 
gr  a  c  eful 
enough,  I 
grant,  but 
she  is  rather 
boisterous." 

The  third 
and  last  pil 
grim  moved 
by,  before 
long,  and  he 
said:  "Ah, 
what  a  tall, 
graceful 
girl !  what 
Madonna- 
like  grace 
fulness  of 
q  u  e  e  n  1  y 
beauty !" 

The  ver 
dicts  were 
all  in.  It 
was  time, 
now,  to  look 

up  the  authorities  for  all  these  opinions.     I  found  this  para 
graph,  which  follows.    Written  by  whom  ?    Win.  C.  Grimes : 

"  After  we  were  in  the  saddle,  we  rode  down  to  the  spring  to  have  a  last  look  at 
the  women  of  Nazareth,  who  were,  as  a  class,  much  the  prettiest  that  we  had  seen 
in  the  East.  As  we  approached  the  crowd  a  tall  girl  of  nineteen  advanced  toward 


\VI1AT   MADOXXA-LIKE  BEAUTY!" 


532  "NOMADIC   LIFE"    LITERATURE. 

Miriam  and  offered  her  a  cup  of  water.  Her  movement  was  graceful  and  queenly. 
We  exclaimed  on  the  spot  at  the  Madonna-like  beauty  of  her  countenance.  White- 
ly  was  suddenly  thirsty,  and  begged  for  water,  and  drank  it  slowly,  with  his  eyes 
over  the  top  of  the  cup,  fixed  on  her  large  black  eyes,  which  gazed  on  him  quite 
as  curiously  as  he  on  her.  Then  Moreright  wanted  water.  She  gave  it  to  him  and 
he  managed  to  spill  it  so  as  to  ask  for  another  cup,  and  by  the  time  she  came  to  me 
she  saw  through  the  operation ;  her  eyes  were  full  of  fun  as  she  looked  at  me.  1 
laughed  outright,  and  she  joined  me  in  as  gay  a  shout  as  ever  countrv  maiden  in 
old  Orange  county.  I  wished  for  a  picture  of  her.  A  Madonna,  whose  face  was  a 
portrait  of  that  beautiful  Nazareth  girl,  would  be  a  'thing  of  beauty'  and  'a  joy 
forever.'  " 

That  is  the  kind  of  gruel  which  has  "been  served  out  from 
Palestine  for  ages.  Commend  me  to  Fennimore  Cooper  to  find 
beauty  in  the  Indians,  and  to  Grimes  to  find  it  in  the  Arabs. 
Arab  men  are  often  fine  looking,  but  Arab  women  are  not. 
We  can  all  believe  that  the  Virgin  Mary  was  beautiful ;  it  is 
not  natural  to  think  otherwise ;  but  does  it  follow  that  it  is 
our  duty  to  find  beauty  in  these  present  women  of  Nazareth? 

I  love  to  quote  from  Grimes,  because  he  is  so  dramatic.  And 
because  he  is  so  romantic.  And  because  he  seems  to  care  but 
little  whether  he  tells  the  truth  or  not,  so  he  scares  the  reader 
or  excites  his  envy  or  his  admiration. 

He  went  through  this  peaceful  land  with  one  hand  forever 
on  his  revolver,  and  the  other  on  his  pocket-handkerchief.  Al 
ways,  when  he  was  not  on  the  point  of  crying  over  a  holy 
place,  he  was  on  the  point  of  killing  an  Arab.  More  surpris 
ing  things  happened  to  him  in  Palestine  than  ever  happened 
to  any  traveler  here  or  elsewhere  since  Munchausen  died. 

At  Beit  Jin,  where  nobody  had  interfered  with  him,  he 
crept  out  of  his  tent  at  dead  of  night  and  shot  at  what  he 
took  to  be  an  Arab  lying  on  a  rock,  some  distance  away,  plan 
ning  evil.  The  ball  killed  a  wolf.  Just  before  he  fired,  he 

O  ' 

makes  a  dramatic  picture  of  himself — as  usual,  to  scare  the 
reader : 

"Was  it  imagination,  or  did  I  see  a  moving  object  on  the  surface  of  the  rock  ? 
If  it  were  a  man,  why  did  he  not  now  drop  me?  He  had  a  beautiful  shot  as  I 
stood  out  in  my  black  boornoose  against  the  white  tent.  I  had  the  sensation  of  an 
entering  bullet  in  my  throat,  breast,  brain." 

Reckless  creature ! 


"NOMADIC     LIFE"     LITERATURE. 


533 


Hiding  toward  Genessaret,  they  saw  two  Bedouins,  and  "  we 
looked  to  our  pistols  and  loosened  them  quietly  in  our  shawls," 
etc.  Always  cool. 

In  Samaria,  he  charged  up  a  hill,  in  the  face  of  a  volley  of 
stones ;  he  fired  into  the  crowd  of  men  who  threw  them.  He 
says  : 

"  I never  lost  an  opportunity  of  impressing  the  Arabs  with  the  perfection  of  Amer 
ican  and  English  weapons,  and  the  danger  of  attacking  any  one  of  the  armed 
Franks.  I  think  the  lesson  of  that  ball  not  lost." 

At  Beitin  he  gave  his  whole  band  of  Arab  muleteers  a  piece 
of  his  mind,  and  then— 

;>  I  content 
ed  myself  with 
a  solemn  assu 
rance  that  if 
there  occurred 
another  in 
stance  of  diso 
bedience  to 
orders,  I 
would  thrash 
the  responsi 
ble  party  as 
he  never 
dreamed  of 
being  thrash 
ed,  and  if  I 
could  not  find 
who  was  re 
sponsible,  I 
would  whip 
them  all,  from 
first  to  last, 
whether  there 
was  a  govern 
or  at  hand  to 
do  it  or  I  had 
to  do  it  my 
self." 

PUTNAM    OUTDONE. 

Perfectly  fearless,  this  man. 

lie  rode  down  the  perpendicular  path  in  the  rocks,  from  the 


534  "NOMADIC   LIFE"    LITERATURE. 

Castle  of  Banias  to  the  oak  grove,  at  a  flying  gallop,  his  horse 
striding  "  thirty  feet "  at  every  bound.  I  stand  prepared  to  bring 
thirty  reliable  witnesses  to  prove  that  Putnam's  famous  feat  at 
Horseneck  was  insignificant  compared  to  this. 

Behold  him — always  theatrical — looking  at  Jerusalem — this 
time,  by  an  oversight,  with  his  hand  off  his  pistol  for  once. 

"I  stood  in  the  road,  my  hand  on  my  horse's  neck,  and  with  my  dim  eyes  sought 
to  trace  the  outlines  of  the  holy  places  which  I  had  long  before  fixed  in  my  mind, 
but  the  fast-flowing  tears  forbade  my  succeeding.  There  were  our  Mohammedan 
servants,  a  Latin  monk,  two  Armenians  and  a  Jew  in  our  cortege,  and  all  alike 
gazed  with  overflowing  eyes." 

If  Latin  monks  and  Arabs  cried,  I  know  to  a  moral  certain 
ty  that  the  horses  cried  also,  and  so  the  picture  is  complete. 

But  when  necessity  demanded,  he  could  be  firm  as  adamant. 
In  the  Lebanon  Valley  an  Arab  youth — a  Christian  ;  he  is  par 
ticular  to  explain  that  Mohammedans  do  not  steal — robbed 
him  of  a  paltry  ten  dollars'  worth,  of  powder  and  shot.  He 
convicted  him  before  a  sheik  and  looked  on  while  he  was 
punished  by  the  terrible  bastinado.  Hear  him  : 

"  He  (Mousa)  was  on  his  back  in  a  twinkling,  howling,  shouting,  screaming,  but 
he  was  carried  out  to  the  piazza  before  the  door,  where  we  could  see  the  operation, 
and  laid  face  down.  One  man  sat  on  his  back  and  one  on  his  legs,  the  latter  hold 
ing  up  his  feet,  while  a  third  laid  on  the  bare  soles  a  rhinoceros-hide  koorbash* 
that  whizzed  through  the  air  at  every  stroke.  Poor  Moreright  was  in  agony,  and 
iSTama  and  Nama  the  Second  (mother  and  sister  of  Mousa,)  were  on  their  faces  beg 
ging  and  wailing,  now  embracing  my  knees  arid  now  "\Vhitely\s,  while  the  brother, 
outside,  made  the  air  ring  with  cries  louder  than  Mousa's.  Even  Yusef  came  and 
asked  me  on  his  knees  to  relent,  and  last  of  all,  Betuni — the  rascal  had  lost  a  feed- 
bag  in  their  house  and  had  been  loudest  in  his  denunciations  that  morning — be 
sought  the  Howajji  to  have  mercy  on  the  fellow." 

But  not  he  !  The  punishment  was  "  suspended,"  at  the  fif 
teenth  How,  to  hear  the  confession.  Then  Grimes  and  his  party 
rode  away,  and  left  the  entire  Christian  family  to  be  fined  and 
as  severely  punished  as  the  Mohammedan  sheik  should  deem 
proper. 

•  "  A  Koorbash  is  Arabic  for  cowhide,  the  cow  being  a  rhinoceros.  It  is  the  most  cruel  whip  known  to  fame. 
Heavy  as  lead,  and  flexible  as  India-rubber,  usually  about  forty  inches  long  and  tapering  gradually  from  an  inch 
in  diameter  to  a  point,  it  administers  a  blow  which  leave*  its  mark  for  tini€."— Scow  Life  in  Egypt,  by  the 
same  author. 


NOMADIC     LIFE"     LITERATURE. 


535 


"  As  I  mounted,  Yusof  once  more  begged  me  to  interfere  and  have  mercy  on 
them,  but  I  looked  around  at  the  dark  faces  of  the  crowd,  and  I  couldn't  find  one 
drop  of  pity  in  my  heart  for  them." 

lie  closes  his  picture  with  a  rollicking  burst  of  humor  which 
contrasts  finely  with  the  grief  of  the  mother  and  her  children. 


THE   BASTINADO. 

One  more  paragraph : 

"  Then  once  more  I  bowed  my  head.  It  is  no  shame  to  have  wept  in  Palestine. 
I  wept,  when  I  saw  Jerusalem,  I  wept  when  I  lay  in  the  starlight  at  Bethlehem,  I 
wept  on  the  blessed  shores  of  Galilee.  My  hand  was  no  less  firm  on  the  rein,  my 
finger  did  not  tremble  on  the  trigger  of  my  pistol  when  I  rode  with  it  in  my  right 
hand  along  the  shore  of  the  blue  sea"  (weeping.)  "  My  eye  was  not  dimmed  by 
those  tears  nor  my  heart  in  aught  weakened.  Let  him  who  would  sneer  at  my 
emotion  close  this  volume  here,  for  he  will  find  little  to  his  taste  in  my  journeyinga 
through  Hoi}'  Land." 

He  never  bored  but  he  struck  water. 


536 


NOMADIC   LIFE"    LITERATURE. 


I  am  aware  that  this  is  a  ^pretty  voluminous  notice  of  Mr. 
Grimes'  book.  However,  it  is  proper  and  legitimate  to  speak 
of  it,  for  "  Nomadic  Life  in  Palestine"  is  a  representative  book 
— the  representative  of  a  class  of  Palestine  books — and  a  criti- 


"I   WEPT." 


cism  upon  it  will  serve  for  a  criticism  upon  them  all.  And 
since  I  am  treating  it  in  the  comprehensive  capacity  of  a  rep 
resentative  book,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  giving  to  both 
book  and  author  fictitious  names.  Perhaps  it  is  in  better  taste, 
any  how,  to  do  this. 


CHAPTEE   LI. 

"VTAZARETH  is  wonderfully  interesting  because  the  town 
-L^l  has  an  air  about  it  of  being  precisely  as  Jesus  left  it, 
and  one  finds  himself  saying,  all  the  time,  "  The  boy  Jesus  has 
stood  in  this  doorway — has  played  in  that  street — has  touched 
these  stones  with  his  hands — has  rambled  over  these  chalky 
hills."  "Whoever  shall  write  the  Boyhood  of  Jesus  ingenious 
ly,  will  make  a  book  which  will  possess  a  vivid  interest  for 
young  and  old  alike.  I  judge  so  from  the  greater  interest  we 
found  in  Nazareth  than  any  of  our  speculations  upon  Caper 
naum  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee  gave  rise  to.  It  was  not  possible, 
standing  by  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  to  frame  more  than  a  vague, 
far-away  idea  of  the  majestic  Personage  who  walked  upon  the 
crested  waves  as  if  they  had  been  solid  earth,  and  who  touched 
the  dead  and  they  rose  up  and  spoke.  I  read  among  my  notes, 
now,  with  a  new  interest,  some  sentences  from  an  edition  of 
1621  of  the  Apocryphal  New  Testament.  [Extract.] 

"  Christ,  kissed  by  a  bride  made  dumb  by  sorcerers,  cures  her.  A  leprous  girl 
cured  by  the  water  in  which  the  infant  Christ  was  washed,  and  becomes  the  servant 
of  Joseph  and  Mary.  The  leprous  son  of  a  Prince  cured  in  like  manner. 

"A  young  man  who  had  been  bewitched  and  turned  into  a  mule,  miraculously 
cured  by  the  infant  Saviour  being  put  on  his  back,  and  is  married  to  the  girl  who 
had  been  cured  of  leprosy.  Whereupon  the  bystanders  praise  God. 

"Chapter  16.  Christ  miraculously  widens  or  contracts  gates,  milk-pails,  sieves  or 
boxes,  not  properly  made  by  Joseph,  he  not  being  skillful  at  his  carpenter's  trade. 
The  King  of  Jerusalem  gives  Joseph  an  order  for  a  throne.  Joseph  works  on  it 
for  two  years  and  makes  it  two  spans  too  short.  The  King  being  angry  with  him, 
Jesus  comforts  him — commands  him  to  pull  one  side  of  the  throne  while  he  pulls 
the  other,  and  brings  it  to  its  proper  dimensions. 

"Chapter  19.    Jesus,  charged  with  throwing  a  boy  from  the  roof  of  a  house,  mi- 


538  DISCARDED     LORE. 

raculously  causes  the  dead  boy  to  speak  and  acquit  him ;  fetches  water  for  his 
mother,  breaks  the  pitcher  and  miraculously  gathers  the  water  in  his  mantle  and 
brings  it  home. 

'•  Sent  to  a  schoolmaster,  refuses  to  tell  his  letters,  and  the  schoolmaster  going  to 
whip  him,  his  hand  withers." 

Further  on  in  this  quaint  volume  of  rejected  gospels  is  an 
epistle  of  St.  Clement  to  the  Corinthians,  which  was  used  in 
the  churches  and  considered  genuine  fourteen  or  fifteen  hun 
dred  years  ago.  In  it  this  account  of  the  fabled  pho3iiix  oc 
curs  : 

"  1.  Let  us  consider  that  wonderful  type  of  the  resurrection,  which  is  seen  in  the 
Eastern  countries,  that  is  to  say,  in  Arabia. 

"  2.  There  is  a  certain  bird  called  a  phoenix.  Of  this  there  is  never  but  one  at  a 
time,  and  that  lives  five  hundred  }rears.  And  when  the  time  of  its  dissolution 
draws  near,  that  it  must  die,  it  makes  itself  a  nest  of  frankincense,  and  myrrh,  and 
.other  spices,  into  which,  when  its  time  is  fuliilled,  it  enters  and  dies. 

"3.  But  its  flesh,  putrefying,  breeds  a  certain  worm,  which,  being  nourished  by 
the  juice  of  the  dead  bird,  brings  forth  feathers;  and  when  it  is  grown  to  a  perfect 
state,  it  takes  up  the  nest  in  which  the  bones  of  its  parent  lie,  and  carries  it  from 
Arabia  into  Egypt,  to  a  city  called  Heliopolis: 

"4.  And  flying  in  open  day  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  lays  it  upon  the  altar  of  the 
sun,  and  so  returns  from  whence  it  came. 

"5.  The  priests  then  search  into  the  records  of  the  time,  and  find  that  it  returned 
precisely  at  the  end  of  five  hundred  years." 

Business  is  business,  and  there  is  nothing  like  punctuality, 
especially  in  a  phcenix. 

The  few  chapters  relating  to  the  infancy  of  the  Saviour  con 
tain  many  things  which  seem  frivolous  and  not  worth  preserv 
ing.  A  large  part  of  the  remaining  portions  of  the  book  read 
like  good  Scripture,  however.  There  is  one  verse  that  ought 
not  to  have  been  rejected,  because  it  so  evidently  prophetically 
refers  to  the  general  run  of  Congresses  of  the  United  States : 

"199.  They  carry  themselves  high,  and  as  prudent  men;  and  though  they  are 
fools,  yet  would  seem  to  be  teachers." 

I  have  set  these  extracts  down,  as  I  found  them.  Every 
where,  among  the  cathedrals  of  France  and  Italy,  one  finds 
traditions  of  personages  that  do  not  figure  in  the  Bible,  and 
of  miracles  that  are  not  mentioned  in  its  pages.  But  they  are 


SYRIAN     TURNPIKE 


539 


all  in  this  Apocryphal  New  Testament,  and  though  they  have 
been  ruled  out  of  our  modern  Bible,  it  is  claimed  that  they 
were  accepted  gospel  twelve  or  fifteen  centuries  ago,  and 
ranked  as  high  in  credit  as  any.  One  needs  to  read  this  book 
before  he  visits  those  venerable  cathedrals,  with  their  treasures 
of  tabooed  and  forgotten  tradition. 

They  imposed  another  pirate  upon  us  at  Nazareth — another 
invincible  Arab  guard.  We  took  our  last  look  at  the  city, 
clinging  like  a  whitewashed  wasp's  nest  to  the  hill-side,  and  at 
eight  o'clock  in  the  morning,  departed.  We  dismounted  and 

drove  the 
horses  down 
a  bridle 
path  which 
I  think  was 
fully  as 
crooked  as  a 
corkscrew ; 
w  li  i  c  li  I 
know  to  be 
as  steep  as 
the  down 
ward  sweep 
of  a  rain 
bow,  and 
which  I  be 
lieve  to  be 
the  worst 
piece  of 

road  in  the  geography,  except 
one  in  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
which  I  remember  painfully, 
and  possibly  one  or  two  moun 
tain  trails  in  the  Sierra  Ke- 
WANT  OF  DIGNITY.  vadas.  Often,  in  this  narrow 

path,  the  horse  had  to  poise 
himself  nicely  on  a  rude  stone  step  and  then  drop  his  fore-feet 


540  DANGEROUS    PILGRIMS. 

over  the  edge  and  down  something  more  than  half  his  own 
height.  This  brought  his  nose  near  the  ground,  while  his  tail 
pointed  up  toward  the  sky  somewThere,  and  gave  him  the  ap 
pearance  of  preparing  to  stand  on  his  head.  A  horse  can  not 
look  dignified  in  this  position.  We  accomplished  the  long  de 
scent  at  last,  and  trotted  across  the  great  Plain  of  Esdraelon. 

Some  of  us  will  be  shot  before  we  finish  this  pilgrimage. 
The  pilgrims  read  "  Nomadic  Life  "  and  keep  themselves  in  a 
constant  state  of  Quixotic  heroism.  They  have  their  hands  on 
their  pistols  ,all  the  time,  and  every  now  and  then,  when  you 
least  expect  it,  they  snatch  them  out  and  take  aim  at  Bedouins 

wrho  are  not  visible,  and  draw  their  knives  and  make  savage 

s 

passes'  at  other  Bedouins  who  do  not  exist.  I  am  in  deadly 
peril  always,  for  these  spasms  are  sudden  and  irregular,  and 
of  course  I  can  hot  tell  when  to  be  getting  out  of  the  way. 
If  I  am  accidentally  murdered,  some  time,  during  one  of  these 
romantic  frenzies  of  the  pilgrims,  Mr.  Grimes  must  be  rigidly 
held  to  answer  as  an  accessory  before  the  fact.  If  the  pilgrims 
would  take  deliberate  aim  and  shoot  at  a  man,  it  would  be  all 
right  and  proper — because  that  man  would  not  be  in  any  clan 
ger  ;  but  these  random  assaults  are  what  I  object  to.  I  do  not 
wish  to  see  any  more  places  like  Esdraelon,  where  the  ground 
is  level  and  people  can  gallop.  It  puts  melodramatic  nonsense 
into  the  pilgrims'  heads.  All  at  once,  when  one  is  jogging 
along  stupidly  in  the  sun,  and  thinking  about  something  ever 
so  far  away,  here  they  come,  at  a  stormy  gallop,  spurring  and 
whooping  at  those  ridgy  old  sore-backed  plugs  till  their  heels 
fly  higher  than  their  heads,  and  as  they  whiz  by,  out  comes  a 
little  potato-gun  of  a  revolver,  there  is  a  startling  little  pop, 
and  a  small  pellet  goes  singing  through  the  air.  Now  that  I 
have  begun  this  pilgrimage,  I  intend  to  go  through  with  it, 
though  sooth  to  say,  nothing  but  the  most  desperate  valor  has 
kept  me  to  my  purpose  up  to  the  present  time.  I  do  not  mind 
Bedouins, — I  am  not  afraid  of  them  ;  because  neither  Bedouins 
nor  ordinary  Arabs  have  shown  any  disposition  to  harm  us, 
but  I  do  feel  afraid  of  my  own  comrades. 

Arriving  at  the  furthest  verge  of  the  Plain,  we  rode  a  little 


HOME  OF  THE  GREAT  WITCH.         541 

way  up  a  lull  and  found  ourselves  at  Endor,  famous  for  its 
witch.  Her  descendants  are  there  yet.  They  were  the  wildest 
horde  of  half-naked  savages  we  have  found  thus  far.  They 
swarmed  out  of  inud  bee-hives ;  out  of  hovels  of  the  dry-goods 
box  pattern  ;  out  of  gaping  caves  under  shelving  rocks;  out 
of  crevices  in  the  earth.  In  five  minutes  the  dead  solitude  and 
silence  of  the  place  were  no  more,  and  a  begging,  screeching, 
shouting  mob  were  struggling  about  the  horses'  feet  and  block 
ing  the  way.  "  Bucksheesh  !  bucksheesh  !  bucksheesh  !  how- 
ajji,  bucksheesh  !"  It  was  Magdala  over  again,  only  here  the 
glare  from  the  infidel  eyes  was  fierce  and  full  of  hate.  The 
population  numbers  two  hundred  and  fifty,  and  more  than 
half  the  citizens  live  in  caves  in  the  rock.  Dirt,  degradation 
and  savagery  are  Endor's  specialty.  We  say  no  more  about 
Magdala  and  Deburieh  now.  Endor  heads  the  list.  It  is  worse 
than  any  Indian  campoodie.  The  hill  is  barren,  rocky,  and  for 
bidding.  No  sprig  of  grass  is  visible,  and  only  one  tree.  This 
is  a  fig-tree,  which  maintains  a  precarious  footing  among  the 
rocks  at  the  mouth  of  the  dismal  cavern  once  occupied  by  the 
veritable  Witch  of  Endor.  In  this  cavern,  tradition  says,  Saul, 
the  King,  sat  at  midnight,  and  stared  and  trembled,  while  the 
earth  shook,  the  thunders  crashed  among  the  hills,  and  out  of 
the  midst  of  fire  and  smoke  the  spirit  of  the  dead  prophet  rose 
up  and  confronted  him.  Saul  had  crept  to  this  place  in  the 
darkness,  while  his  army  slept,  to  learn  what  fate  awaited  him 
in  the  morrow's  battle.  lie  went  away  a  sad  man,  to  meet 
disgrace  and  death. 

A  spring  trickles  out  of  the  rock  in  the  gloomy  recesses  of 
the  cavern,  and  wre  were  thirsty.  The  citizens  of  Endor  ob 
jected  to  our  going  in  there.  They  do  not  mind  dirt ;  they  do 
not  mind  rags ;  they  do  not  mind  vermin ;  they  do  not  mind 
barbarous  ignorance  and  savagery ;  they  do  not  mind  a  reason 
able  degree  of  starvation,  but  they  do  like  to  be  pure  and  holy 
before  their  god,  whoever  he  may  be,  and  therefore  they  shud 
der  and  grow  almost  pale  at  the  idea  of  Christian  lips  pollu 
ting  a  spring  whose  waters  must  descend  into  their  sanctified 
gullets.  We  had  no  wanton  desire  to  wound  even  their  feel- 


542  NAIN. 

ings  or  trample  upon  their  prejudices,  but  we  were  out  of 
water,  thus  early  in  the  day,  and  were  burning  up  with  thirst. 
It  was  at  this  time,  and  under  these  circumstances,  that  I 
framed  an  aphorism  which  has  already  become  celebrated.  I 
said  :  "  Necessity  knows  no  law."  "We  went  in  and  drank. 

We  got  away  from  the  noisy  wretches,  finally,  dropping 
them  in  squads  and  couples  as  we  filed  over  the  hills — the  aged 
first,  the  infants  next,  the  young  girls  further  on ;  the  strong 
men  ran  beside  us  a  mile,  and  only  left  when  they  had  secured 
the  last  possible  piastre  in  the  way  of  bucksheesh. 

In  an  hour,  we  reached  Naiii,  where  Christ  raised  the 
widow's  son  to  life.  Naiii  is  Magdala  on  a  small  scale.  It  has 
no  population  of  any  consequence.  "Within  a  hundred  yards 
of  it  is  the  original  graveyard,  for  aught  I  know ;  the  tomb 
stones  lie  flat  on  the  ground,  which  is  Jewish  fashion  in  Syria. 
I  believe  the  Moslems  do  not  allow  them  to  have  upright 
tombstones.  A  Moslem  grave  is  usually  roughly  plastered 
over  and  whitewashed,  and  has  at  one  end  an  upright  projec 
tion  which  is  shaped  into  exceedingly  rude  attempts  at  orna 
mentation.  In  the  cities,  there  is  often  no  appearance  of  a 
grave  at  all ;  a  tall,  slender  marble  tombstone,  elaborately  let- 
tred,  gilded  and  painted,  marks  the  burial  place,  and  this  is 
surmounted  by  a  turban,  so  carved  and  shaped  as  to  signify 
the  dead  man's  rank  in  life. 

They  showed  a  fragment  of  ancient  wall  which  they  said 
was  one  side  of  the  gate  out  of  which  the  widow's  dead  son 
was  being  brought  so  many  centuries  ago  when  Jesus  met  the 
procession  : 

"Xow  when  he  came  nigh  to  the  grate  of  the  city,  behold  there  was  a  dead  man 
carried  out,  the  only  son  of  his  mother,  and  she  was  a  widow :  and  much  people 
of  the  city  was  with  her. 

"  And  when  the  Lord  saw  her,  he  had  compassion  on  her,  and  said.  Weep  not. 

"  And  he  came  and  touched  the  bier :  and  they  that  bare  him  stood  still.  And 
he  said,  Young  man,  I  say  unto  thee,  arise. 

"And  he  that  was  dead  sat  up,  and  began  to  speak.  And  he  delivered  him  to 
his  mother. 

"  And  there  came  a  fear  on  all.  And  they  glorified  God,  saying.  That  a  great 
prophet  is  risen  up  among  us;  and  That  God  hath  visited  his  people." 


ORIENTAL     SCENES.  5-i3 

A  little  mosque  stands  upon  the  spot  which  tradition  says 
was  occupied  by  the  widow's  dwelling.  Two  or  three  aged 
Arabs  sat  about  its  door.  We  entered,  and  the  pilgrims  broke 
specimens  from  the  foundation  walls,  though  they  had  to  touch, 
and  even  step,  upon  the  "  praying  carpets  "  to  do  it.  It  was 
almost  the  same  as  breaking  pieces  from  the  hearts  of  those 
old  Arabs.  To  step  rudely  upon  the  sacred  praying  mats,  with 
booted  feet — a  thing  not  done  by  any  Arab — was  to  inflict 
pain  upon  men  who  had  not  offended  us  in  any  way.  Sup 
pose  a  party  of  armed  foreigners  were  to  enter  a  village  church 
in  America  and  break  ornaments  from  the  altar  railings  for 
curiosities,  and  climb  up  and  walk  upon  the  Bible  and  the  pul 
pit  cushions  ?  However,  the  cases  are  different.  One  is  the 
profanation  of  a  temple  of  our  faith — the  other  only  the'profa- 
nation  of  a  pagan  one. 

We  descended  to  the  Plain  again,  and  halted  a  moment  at  a 
well — of  Abraham's  time,  no  doubt.  It  was  in  a  desert  place. 
It  was  walled  three  feet  above  ground  with  squared  and  heavy 
blocks  of  stone,  after  the  manner  of  Bible  pictures.  Around 
it  some  camels  stood,  and  others  knelt.  There  was  a  group  of 
sober  little  donkeys  with  naked,  dusky  children  clambering 
about  them,  or  sitting  astride  their  rumps,  or  pulling  their 
tails.  Tawny,  black-eyed,  barefooted  maids,  arrayed  in  rags 
and  adorned  with  brazen  armlets  and  pinchbeck  ear-rings,  were 
poising  water-jars  upon  their  heads,  or  drawing  water  from  the 
well.  A  flock  of  sheep  stood  by,  waiting  for  the  shepherds  to 
fill  the  hollowed  stones  with  water,  so  that  they  might  drink — 
stones  which,  like  those  that  walled  the  well,  were  worn 
smooth  and  deeply  creased  by  the  chafing  chins  of  ft  hundred 
generations  of  thirsty  animals.  Picturesque  Arabs  sat  upon 
the  ground,  in  groups,  and.  solemnly  smoked  their  long- 
stemmed  chibouks.  Other  Arabs  were  filling  black  hog-skins 
with  water — skins  which,  well  filled,  and  distended  with  water 
till  the  short  legs  projected  painfully  out  of  tli^  proper  line, 
looked  like  the  corpses  of  hogs  bloated  by  drowning.  Here 
was  a  grand  Oriental  picture  which  I  had  worshiped  a  thou 
sand  times  in  soft,  rich  steel  engravings !  But  in  the  engra- 


544 


ORIENTAL     SCENES. 


ving  there  was  no  desolation  ;  no  dirt ;  no  rags  ;  no  fleas  ;  no 
ugly  features  ;  no  sore  eyes  ;  no  feasting  flies ;  no  besotted  ig 
norance  in  tlie  countenances;  no  raw  places  on  the  donkeys' 
backs ;  no  disagreeable  jabbering  in  unknown  tongues ;  no 
stench  of  camels ;  no  suggestion  that  a  couple  of  tons  of  pow- 


AN   ORIENTAL   WELL. 


der  placed  under  the  party  and  touched  off  would  heighten  the 
effect  and  give  to  the  scene  a  genuine  interest  and  a  charm 
which  it  would  always  be  pleasant  to  recall,  even  though  a 
man  lived  a  thousand  years. 

Oriental  scenes  look  best  in  steel  engravings.  I  can  not  be 
imposed  upon  any  more  by  that  picture  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba 
visiting  Solomon.  I  shall  say  to  myself,  You  look  fine,  Mad 
am,  but  your  feet  are  not  clean,  and  you  smell  like  a  camel. 


THE    ORIENTAL    KISS. 


545 


ARABS  SALUTING. 


Presently  a  wild  Arab  in  charge  of  a  camel  train  recognized 
an  old  friend  in  Ferguson,  and  they  ran  and  fell  upon  each 
other's  necks  and  kissed 
each  other's  grimy, 
bearded  faces  upon  both 
cheeks.  It  explained 
instantly  a  something 
which  had  always  seem 
ed  to  me  only  a  far 
fetched  Oriental  figure 
of  speech.  I  refer  to  the 
circumstance  of  Christ's 
rebuking  a  Pharisee,  or 
some  such  character,  and 
reminding  him  that  from 

him  he  had  received  no  "  kiss  of  welcome."  It  did  not  seem 
reasonable  to  me  that  men  should  kiss  each  other,  but  I  am 
aware,  now,  that  they  did.  There  was  reason  in  it,  too.  The 
custom  was  natural  and  proper ;  because  people  must  kiss,  and 
a  man  would  not  be  likely  to  kiss  one  of  the  women  of  this 
country  of  his  own  free  will  and  accord.  One  must  travel,  to 
learn.  Every  day,  now,  old  Scriptural  phrases  that  never  pos 
sessed  any  significance  for  me  before,  take  to  themselves  a 
meaning. 

We  journeyed  around  the  base  of  the  mountain — "  Little 
Hermon," — past  the  old  Crusaders'  castle  of  El  Fuleh,  and 
arrived  at  Slmnem.  This  \vas  another  Magdala,  to  a  fraction, 
frescoes  and  all.  Here,  tradition  says,  the  prophet  Samuel  was 
born,  and  here  the  Shunamite  woman  built  a  little  house  upon 
the  city  wall  for  the  accommodation  of  the  prophet  Elisha. 
Elisha  asked  her  what  she  expected  in  return.  It  was  a  per 
fectly  natural  question,  for  these  people  are  and  were  in  the 
habit  of  proffering  favors  and  services  and  then  expecting  and 
begging  for  pay.  Elisha  knew  them  well.  He  could  not  com 
prehend  that  any  body  should  build  for  him  that  humble  little 
chamber  for  the  mere  sake  of  old  friendship,  and  with  no  selfish 
motive  whatever.  It  used  to  seem  a  very  impolite,  not  to  say 

35 


546 


THE     S  H  U  N  E  M     MIRACLE. 


a  rude  question,  for  Elislia  to  ask  the  woman,  but  it  does  not 
seem  so  to  me  now.  The  woman  said  she  expected  nothing. 
Then  for  her  goodness  and  her  unselfishness,  he  rejoiced  her 
heart  with  the  news  that  she  should  bear  a  son.  It  was  a  high 
reward — but  she  would  not  have  thanked  him  for  a  daughter 
— daughters  have  always  been  unpopular  here.  The  son  was 
born,  grew,  waxed  strong,  died.  Elisha  restored  him  to  life 
in  Shunem. 

We  found  here  a  grove  of  lemon  trees — cool,  shady,  hung 
with  fruit.  One  is  apt  to  overestimate  beauty  when  it  is  rare, 
but  to  me  this  grove  seemed  very  beautiful.  It  icas  beautiful. 
I  do  not  overestimate  it.  I  must  always  remember  Shunem 
gratefully,  as  a  place  which  gave  to  us  this  leafy  shelter  after 
our  long,  hot  ride.  "We  lunched,  rested,  chatted,  smoked  our 
pipes  an  hour,  and  then  mounted  and  moved  on. 


"FREE  SONS  OF  THE  DESERT." 


As  we  trotted  across  the  Plain  of  Jezreel,  we  met  half  a 
dozen  Digger  Indians  (Bedouins)  with  very  long  spears  in  their 


JEZREEL.  547 

hands,  cavorting  around  on  old  crowbait  horses,  and  spearing 
imaginary  enemies ;  whooping,  and  fluttering  their  rags  in  the 
wind,  and  carrying  on  in  every  respect  like  a  pack  of  hopeless 
lunatics.  At  last,  here  were  the  "wild,  free  sons  of  the  desert, 
speeding  over  the  plain  like  the  wind,  on  their  beautiful  Ara 
bian  mares  "  we  had  read  so  much  about  and  longed  so  much 
to  see  !  Here  were  the  "  picturesque  costumes  !"  This  was 
the  "  gallant  spectacle  !"  Tatterdemalion  vagrants — cheap 
braggadocio — "  Arabian  mares  "  spined  and  necked  like  the 
ichthyosaurus  in  the  museum,  and  humped  and  cornered  like 
a  dromedary !  To  glance  at  the  genuine  son  of  the  desert  is 
to  take  the  romance  out  of  him  forever — to  behold  his  steed  is 
to  long  in  charity  to  strip  his  harness  off  and  let  him  fall  to 
pieces. 

Presently  we  came  to  a  ruinous  old  town  on  a  hill,  the  same 
being  the  ancient  Jezreel. 

Ahab,  King  of  Samaria,  (this  wras  a  very  vast  kingdom,  for 
those  days,  and  was  very  nearly  half  as  large  as  Rhode  Island) 
dwelt  in  the  city  of  Jezreel,  which  wras  his  capital.  Near  him 
lived  a  man  by  the  name  of  Naboth,  \vho  had  a  vineyard.  The 
King  asked  him  for  it,  and  wlien  he  would  not  give  it,  offered 
to  buy  it.  But  Naboth  refused  to  sell  it.  In  those  days  it  wras 
considered  a  sort  of  crime  to  part  with  one's  inheritance  at  any 
price — and  even  if  a  man  did  part  with  it,  it  reverted  to  him 
self  or  his  heirs  again  at  the  next  jubilee  year.  So  this  spoiled 

child  of  a  Kino;  went  and  lay  down  on  the  bed  with  his  face  to 

*v~~~~~^~^~^~~^ 
the  wail,  and  grieve^  sorely.    The  Queen,  a  notorious  character 

in  those  days,  and  whose  name  is  a  by-word  and  a  reproach 
even  in  these,  came  in  and  asked  him  wherefore  he  sorrowed, 
and  he  told  her.  Jezebel  said  she  could  secure  the  vineyard  ; 
and  she  went  forth  and  forged  letters  to  the  nobles  and  wise 
men,  in  the  King's  name,  and  ordered  them  to  proclaim  a  fast 
and  set  Naboth  on  high  before  the  people,  and  suborn  two  wit 
nesses  to  swear  that  he  had  blasphemed.  They  did  it,  and  the 
people  stoned  the  accused  by  the  city  wall,  and  he  died.  Then 
Jezebel  came  and  told  the  King,  and  said,  Behold,  Naboth  is 
no  more — rise  up  and  seize  the  vineyard.  So  Ahab  seized  the 


548  THE    CHURCH    MILITANT. 

vineyard,  and  went  into  it  to  possess  it.  But  the  Prophet  Eli 
jah  came  to  him  there  and  read  his  fate  to  him,  and  the  fate 
of  Jezebel ;  and  said  that  in  the  place  where  dogs  licked  the 
blood  of  Naboth,  dogs  should  also  lick  his  blood — and  he  said, 
likewise,  the  dogs  should  eat  Jezebel  by  the  wall  of  Jezreel. 
In  the  course  of  time,  the  King  was  killed  in  battle,  and  when 
his  chariot  wheels  were  washed  in  the  pool  of  Samaria,  the 
clogs  licked  the  blood.  In  after  years,  Jehu,  who  was  King  of 
Israel,  marched  down  against  Jezreel,  by  order  of  one  of  the 
Prophets,  and  administered  one  of  those  convincing  rebukes  so 
common  among  the  people  of  those  days  :  he  killed  many 
kings  and  their  subjects,  and  as  he  came  along  he  saw  Jezebel, 
painted  and  finely  dressed,  looking  out  of  a  window,  and  or 
dered  that  she  be  thrown  down  to  him.  A  servant  did  it,  and 
Jehu's  horse  trampled  her  under  foot.  Then  Jehu  went  in  and 
sat  down  to  dinner ;  and  presently  he  said,  Go  and  bury  this 
cursed  woman,  for  she  is  a  King's  daughter.  The  spirit  of 
charity  came  upon  him  too  late,  however,  for  the  prophecy  had 
already  been  fulfilled — the  dogs  had  eaten  her,  and  they 
"  found  no  more  of  her  than  the  skull,  and  the  feet,  and  the 
palms  of  her  hands." 

Ahab,  the  late  King,  had  left  a  helpless  family  behind  him, 
and  Jehu  killed  seventy  of  the  orphan  sons.  Then  he  killed 
all  the  relatives,  and  teachers,  and  servants  and  friends  of  the 
family,  and  rested  from  his  labors,  until  he  was  come  near  to 
Samaria,  wThere  he  met  forty-two  persons  and  asked  them  who 
they  were  ;  they  said  they  were  brothers  of  the  King  of  Judah. 
He  killed  them.  When  he  got  to  Samaria,  he  said  he  would 
show  his  zeal  for  the  Lord  ;  so  he  gathered  all  the  priests  and 
people  together  that  worshiped  Baal,  pretending  that  he  was 
going  to  adopt  that  worship  and  offer  up  a  great  sacrifice ;  and 
when  they  were  all  shut  up  where  they  could  not  defend  them 
selves,  he  caused  every  person  of  them  to  be  killed.  Then 
Jehu,  the  good  missionary,  rested  from  his  labors  once  more. 

"We  went  back  to  the  valley,  and  rode'  to  the  Fountain  of 
Ain  Jelud.  They  call  it  the  Fountain  of  Jezreel,  usually.  It 
is  a  pond  about  one  hundred  feet  square  and  four  feet  deep, 


GIDEON'S   BAND — SAMARIA.  549 

with  a  stream  of  water  trickling  into  it  from  under  an  over 
hanging  ledge  of  rocks.  It  is  in  the  midst  of  a  great  solitude. 
Here  Gideon  pitched  his  camp  in  the  old  times ;  behind  Shu- 
nem  lay  the  "  Midianites,  the  Amalekites,  and  the  Children  of 
the  East,"  who  were  "  as  grasshoppers  for  multitude ;  both 
they  and  their  camels  were  without  number,  as  the  sand  by 
the  sea-side  for  multitude."  Which  means  that  there  were  one 
hundred  and  thirty-five  thousand  men,  and  that  they  had 
transportation  service  accordingly. 

Gideon,  with  only  three  hundred  men,  surprised  them  in  the 
night,  and  stood  by  and  looked  on  while  they  butchered  each 
other  until  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  lay  dead  on  the 
field. 

We  camped  at  Jenin  before  night,  and  got  up  and  started 
again  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Somewhere  towards 
daylight  we  passed  the  locality  where  the  best  authenticated 
tradition  locates  the  pit  into  which  Joseph's  brethren  threw 
him,  and  about  noon,  after  passing  over  a  succession  of  moun 
tain  tops,  clad  with  groves  of  fig  and  olive  trees,  with  the  Med 
iterranean  in  sight  some  forty  miles  away,  and  going  by  many 
ancient  Biblical  cities  whose  inhabitants  glowered  savagely 
upon  our  Christian  procession,  and  were  seemingly  inclined  to 
practice  on  it  with  stones,  we  came  to  the  singularly  terraced 
and  unlovely  hills  that  betrayed  that  we  were  out  of  Galilee 
and  into  Samaria  at  last. 

We  climbed  a  high  hill  to  visit  the  city  of  Samaria,  where 
the  woman  may  have  hailed  from  who  conversed  with  Christ 
at  Jacob's  Well,  and  from  whence,  no  doubt,  came  also  the  cel 
ebrated  Good  Samaritan.  Herod  the  Great  is  said  to  have 
made  a  magnificent  city  of  this  place,  and  a  great  number  of 
coarse  limestone  columns,  twenty  feet  high  and  two  feet 
through,  that  are  almost  guiltless  of  architectural  grace  of 
shape  and  ornament,  are  pointed  out  by  many  authors  as  evi 
dence  of  the  fact.  They  would  not  have  been  considered 
handsome  in  ancient  Greece,  however. 

The  inhabitants  of  this  camp  are  particularly  vicious,  and 
stoned  two  parties  of  our  pilgrims  a  day  or  two  ago  who 


550  SAMARIA. 

brought  about  the  difficulty  by  showing  their  revolvers  when 
they  did  not  intend  to  use  them — a  thing  which  is  deemed  bad 
judgment  in  the  Far  West,  and  ought  certainly  to  be  so  con 
sidered  any  where.  In  the  new  Territories,  when  a  man  puts 
his  hand  on  a  weapon,  he  knows  that  he  must  use  it ;  he  must 
use  it  instantly  or  expect  to  be  shot  down  where  he  stands. 
Those  pilgrims  had  been  reading  Grimes. 

There  was  nothing  for  us  to  do  in  Samaria  but  buy  handfuls 
of  old  Roman  coins  at  a  franc  a  dozen,  and  look  at  a  dilapi 
dated  church  of  the  Crusaders  and  a  vault  in  it  which  once 
contained  the  body  of  John  the  Baptist.  This  relic  was  long 
ago  carried  awTay  to  Genoa. 

Samaria  stood  a  disastrous  siege,  once,  in  the  days  of  Elisha, 
at  the  hands  of  the  King  of  Syria.  Provisions  reached  such  a 
figure  that  "  an  ass'  head  was  sold  for  eighty  pieces  of  silver 
and  the  fourth  part  of  a  cab  of  dove's  dung  for  five  pieces  of 
silver." 

An  incident  recorded  of  that  heavy  time  will  give  one  a 
very  good  idea  of  the  distress  that  prevailed  within  these 
crumbling  walls.  As  the  King  was  walking  upon  the  battle 
ments  one  day,  "  a  woman  cried  out,  saying,  Help,  my  lord,  O 
King !  And  the  King  said,  "What  aileth  thee  ?  and  she  an 
swered,  This  woman  said  unto  me,  Give  thy  son,  that  we  may 
eat  him  to-day,  and  we  will  eat  my  son  to-morrow.  So  we 
boiled  my  son,  and  did  eat  him ;  and  I  said  unto  her  on  the 
next  day,  Give  thy  son  that  we  may  eat  him ;  and  she  hath 
hid  her  son." 

The  prophet  Elisha  declared  that  within  four  and  twenty 
hours  the  prices  of  food  should  go  down  to  nothing,  almost, 
and  it  was  so.  The  Syrian  army  broke  camp  and  fled,  for  some 
cause  or  other,  the  famine  was  relieved  from  without,  and  many 
a  shoddy  speculator  in  dove's  dung  and  ass's  meat  was  ruined. 

We  were  glad  to  leave  this  hot  and  dusty  old  village  and 
hurry  on.  At  two  o'clock  we  stopped  to  lunch  and  rest  at  an 
cient  Shechem,  between  the  historic  Mounts  of  Gerizim  and 
Ebal  where  in  the  old  times  the  books  of  the  law,  the  curses 
and  the  blessings,  were  read  from  the  heights  to  the  Jewish 
multitudes  below. 


OHAPTEE   LII.  , 

narrow  canon  in  which  Nablous,  or  Shechem,  is  situ- 
ated,  is  under  high  cultivation,  and  the  soil  is  exceed 
ingly  black  and  fertile.  It  is  well  watered,  and  its  affluent 
vegetation  gains  effect  by  contrast  with  the  barren  hills  that 
tower  on  either  side.  One  of  these  hills  is  the  ancient  Mount 
of  Blessings  and  the  other  the  Mount  of  Curses  ;  and  wise  men 
who  seek  for  fulfillments  of  prophecy  think  they  find  here  a 
wonder  of  this  kind — to  wit,  that  the  Mount  of  Blessings  is 
strangely  fertile  and  its  mate  as  strangely  unproductive.  We 
could  not  see  that  there  was  really  much  difference  between 
them  in  this  respect,  however. 

Shechem  is  distinguished  as  one  of  the  residences  of  the  pa 
triarch  Jacob,  and  as  the  seat  of  those  tribes  that  cut  them 
selves  loose  from  their  brethren  of  Israel  and  propagated  doc 
trines  not  in  conformity  with  those  of  the  original  Jewish 
creed.  For  thousands  of  years  this  clan  have  dwelt  in  Shechem 
under  strict  tabu,  and  having  little  commerce  or  fellowship 
with  their  fellow  men  of  any  religion  or  nationality.  For  gen 
erations  they  have  not  numbered  more  than  one  or  two  hun 
dred,  but  they  still  adhere  to  their  ancient  faith  and  maintain 
their  ancient  rites  and  ceremonies.  Talk  of  family  and  old 
descent !  Princes  and  nobles  pride  themselves  upon  lineages 
they  can  trace  back  some  hundreds  of  years.  What  is  this 
trifle  to  this  handful  of  old  first  families  of  Shechem,  who  can 
name  their  fathers  straight  back  without  a  flaw  for  thousands 
— straight  back  to  a  period  so  remote  that  men  reared  in  a 
country  where  the  days  of  two  hundred  years  ago  are  called 


552 


THE     OLDEST     MSS.     EXTANT. 


"  ancient "  times  grow  dazed  and  bewildered  when  they  try  to 
comprehend  it !  Here  is  respectability  for  you — here  is  "  fam 
ily" — here  is  high  descent  worth  talking  about.  This  sad, 
proud  remnant  of  a  once  mighty  community  still  hold  them 
selves  aloof  from  all  the  world  ;  they  still  live  as  their  fathers 
lived,  labor  as  their  fathers  labored,  think  as  they  did,  feel  as 
they  did,  worship  in  the  same  place,  in  sight  of  the  same  land 
marks,  and  in  the  same  quaint,  patriarchal  way  their  ancestors 
did  more  than  thirty  centuries  ago.  I  found  myself  gazing  at 
any  straggling  scion  of  this  strange  race  with  a  riveted  fasci 
nation,  just  as  one  would  stare  at  a  living  mastodon,  or  a  meg 
atherium  that  had  moved  in  the  grey  dawn  of  creation  and 
seen  the  wonders  of  that  mysterious  world  that  was  before  the 
flood. 

Carefully  preserved  among  the  sacred  archives  of  this  curious 

community  is 
a  MSS.  copy 

't^^ddfik^-  of  the  ancient 

Jewish  law, 
which  is  said 
to  be  the  old 
est  document 
on  earth.  It 
is  written  on 
vellum,  and  is 
some  four  or 
five  thousand 
years  old. 
Nothing  but 
bucksheesh 

can  purchase  a  sight.  Its  fame  is  somewhat  dimmed  in  these 
latter  days,  because  of  the  doubts  so  many  authors  of  Palestine 
travels  have  felt  themselves  privileged  to  cast  upon  it.  Speak 
ing  of  this  MSS.  reminds  me  that  I  procured  from  the  high- 
priest  of  this  ancient  Samaritan  community,  at  great  expense,  a 
secret  document  of  still  higher  antiquity  and  far  more  extraor 
dinary  interest,  which  I  propose  to  publish  as  soon  as  I  have 
finished  translating  it. 


S1IECHEM. 


JOSEPH'S   TOMB — JACOB'S   WELL.  553 

Joshua  gave  his  dying  injunction  to  the  children  of  Israel  at 
Shechem,  and  buried  a  valuable  treasure  secretly  under  an  oak 
tree  there  about  the  same  time.  The  superstitious  Samaritans 
have  always  been  afraid  to  hunt  for  it.  They  believe  it  is 
guarded  by  fierce  spirits  invisible  to  men. 

About  a  mile  and  a  half  from  Shechem  we  halted  at  the 
base  of  Mount  Ebal,  before  a  little  square  area,  inclosed  by  a 
high  stone  wall,  neatly  whitewashed.  Across  one  end  of  this 
inclosure  is  a  tomb  built  after  the  manner  of  the  Moslems.  It 
is  the  tomb  of  Joseph.  No  truth  is  better  authenticated  than 
this. 

When  Joseph  was  dying  he  prophesied  that  exodus  of  the 
Israelites  from  Egypt  which  occurred  four  hundred  years  after 
wards.  At  the  same  time  he  exacted  of  his  people  an  oath 
that  when  they  journeyed  to  the  land  of  Canaan,  they  would 
bear  his  bones  with  them  and  bury  them  in  the  ancient  inher 
itance  of  his  fathers.  The  oath  was  kept. 

"And  the  bones  of  Joseph,  which  the  children  of  Israel  brought  up  out  of  Egypt, 
buried  they  in  Shechem,  in  a  parcel  of  ground  which  Jacob  bought  of  the  sons  of 
Hamor  the  father  of  Shechem,  for  a  hundred  pieces  of  silver." 

Few  tombs  on  earth  command  the  veneration  of  so  many 
races  and  men  of  divers  creeds  as  this  of  Joseph.  "  Samaritan 
and  Jew,  Moslem  and  Christian  alike,  revere  it,  and  honor  it 
with  their  visits.  The  tomb  of  Joseph,  the  dutiful  son,  the 
affectionate,  forgiving  brother,  the  virtuous  man,  the  wise 
Prince  and  ruler.  Egypt  felt  his  influence — the  world  knows 
his  history." 

In  this  same  "  parcel  of  ground  "  which  Jacob  bought  of  the 
sons  of  Hamor  for  a  hundred  pieces  of  silver,  is  Jacob's  cele 
brated  well.  It  is  cut  in  the  solid  rock,  and  is  nine  feet  square 
and  ninety  feet  deep.  The  name  of  this  unpretending  hole  in 
the  ground,  which  one  might  pass  by  and  take  no  notice  of,  is 
as  familiar  as  household  words  to  even  the  children  and  the 
peasants  of  many  a  far-off  country.  It  is  more  famous  than 
the  Parthenon ;  it  is  older  than  the  Pyramids. 

It  was  by  this  well  that  Jesus  sat  and  talked  with  a  woman 


554  CAMPING     WITH     THE     ARABS. 

of  that  strange,  antiquated  Samaritan  community  I  have  been 
speaking  of,  and  told  her  of  the  mysterious  water  of  life.  As 
descendants  of  old  English  nobles  still  cherish  in  the  traditions 
of  their  houses  how  that  this  king  or  that  king  tarried  a  day 
with  some  favored  ancestor  three  hundred  years  ago,  no  doubt 
the  descendants  of  the  woman  of  Samaria,  living  there  in  She- 
chem,  still  refer  with  pardonable  vanity  to  this  conversation  of 
their  ancestor,  held  some  little  time  gone  by,  with  the  Messiah 
of  the  Christians.  It  is  not  likely  that  they  undervalue  a  dis 
tinction  such  as  this.  Samaritan  nature  is  human  nature,  and 
human  nature  remembers  contact  with  the  illustrious,  always. 

For  an  offense  done  to  the  family  honor,  the  sons  of  Jacob 
exterminated  all  Shechem  once. 

We  left  Jacob's  Well  and  traveled  till  eight  in  the  evening, 
but  rather  slowly,  for  we  had  been  in  the  saddle  nineteen 
hours,  and  the  horses  were  cruelly  tired.  We  got  so  far  ahead 
of  the  tents  that  we  had  to  camp  in  an  Arab  village,  and  sleep 
on  the  ground.  We  could  have  slept  in  the  largest  of  the 
houses ;  but  there  were  some  little  drawbacks :  it  was  populous 
with  vermin,  it  had  a  dirt  floor,  it  was  in  no  respect  cleanly, 
and  there  was  a  family  of  goats  in  the  only  bedroom,  and  two 
donkeys  in  the  parlor.  Outside  there  were  no  inconveniences, 
except  that  the  dusky,  ragged,  earnest-eyed  villagers  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages  grouped  themselves  on  their  haunches  all 
around  us,  and  discussed  us  and  criticised  us  with  noisy  tongues 
till  midnight.  We  did  not  mind  the  noise,  being  tired,  but, 
doubtless,  the  reader  is  aware  that  it  is  almost  an  impossible 
thing  to  go  to  sleep  when  you  know  that  people  are  looking  at 
you.  We  went  to  bed  at  ten,  and  got  up  again  at  two  and 
started  once  more.  Thus  are  people  persecuted  by  dragomen, 
whose  sole  ambition  in  life  is  to  get  ahead  of  each  other. 

About  daylight  we  passed  Shiloh,  where  the  Ark  of  the  Cov 
enant  rested  three  hundred  years,  and  at  whose  gates  good  old 
Eli  fell  down  and  "brake  his  neck"  when  the  messenger, 
riding  hard  from  the  battle,  told  him  of  the  defeat  of  his  peo 
ple,  the  death  of  his  sons,  and,  more  than  all,  the  capture  of 
Israel's  pride,  her  hope,  her  refuge,  the  ancient  Ark  her  fore- 


JACOB'S   LADDER.  555 

fathers  brought  with  them  out  of  Egypt.  It  is  little  wonder 
that  under  circumstances  like  these  he  fell  down  and  brake  his 
neck.  But  Sliiloh  had  no  charms  for  us.  We  were  so  cold 
that  there  was  no  comfort  but  in  motion,  and  so  drowsy 
we  could  hardly  sit  upon  the  horses. 

After  a  while  we  came  to  a  shapeless  mass  of  ruins,  which 
still  bears  the  name  of  Beth-el.  It  wa*s  here  that  Jacob  lay 
down  and  had  that  superb  vision  of  angels  flitting  up  and 
down  a  ladder  that  reached  from  the  clouds  to  earth,  and 
caught  glimpses  of  their  blessed  home  through  the  open  gates 
of  Heaven. 

The  pilgrims  took  what  was  left  of  the  hallowed  ruin,  and 
we  pressed  on  toward  the  goal  of  our  crusade,  renowned  Jeru 
salem. 

The  further  we  went  the  hotter  the  sun  got,  and  the  more 
rocky  and  bare,  repulsive  and  dreary  the  landscape  became. 
There  could  not  have  been  more  fragments  of  stone  strewn 
broadcast  over  this  part  of  the  world,  if  every  ten  square  feet 
of  the  land  had  been  occupied  by  a  separate  and  distinct  stone 
cutter's  establishment  for  an  age.  There  \vas  hardly  a  tree  or 
a  shrub  any  where.  Even  the  olive  and  the  cactus,  those  fast 
friends  of  a  worthless  soil,  had  almost  deserted  the  country. 
Ko  landscape  exists  that  is  more  tiresome  to  the  eye  than  that 
which  bounds  the  approaches  to  Jerusalem.  The  only  differ 
ence  between  the  roads  and  the  surrounding  country,  perhaps, 
is  that  there  are  rather  more  rocks  in  the  roads  than  in  the 
surrounding  country. 

We  passed  Ramah,  and  Beroth,  and  on  the  right  saw  the 
tomb  of  the  prophet  Samuel,  perched  high  upon  a  command 
ing  eminence.  Still  no  Jerusalem  came  in  sight.  We  hurried 
on  impatiently.  We  halted  a  moment  at  the  ancient  Fountain 
of  Beira,  but  its  stones,  worn  deeply  by  the  chins  of  thirsty 
animals  that  are  dead  and  gone  centuries  ago,  had  no  interest 
for  us — we  longed  to  see  Jerusalem.  We  spurred  up  hill  after 
hill,  and  usually  began  to  stretch  our  necks  minutes  before  we 
got  to  the  top — but  disappointment  always  followed  : — more 
stupid  hills  beyond — more  unsightly  landscape — no  Holy  City. 


556 


JERUSALEM. 


At  last,  away  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  ancient  bits  of  wall 
and  crumbling  arches  began  to  line  the  way — we  toiled  up  one 
more  hill,  and  every  pilgrim  and  every  sinner  swung  his  hat 
on  high  !  Jerusalem  ! 

Perched  on  its  eternal  hills,  white  and  domed  and  solid, 
massed  together  and  hooped  with  high  gray  walls,  the  vener 
able  city  gleamed  in  the  sun.  So  small !  Why,  it  was  no 
larger  than  an  American  village  of  four  thousand  inhabitants, 
and  no  larger  than  an  ordinary  Syrian  city  of  thirty  thousand. 
Jerusalem  numbers  only  fourteen  thousand  people. 

We  dismounted  and  looked,  without  speaking  a  dozen  sen 
tences,  across  the  wide  intervening  valley  for  an  hour  or  more ; 
and  noted  those  prominent  features  of  the  city  that  pictures 
make  familiar  to  all  men  from  their  school  days  till  their 
death.  We  could  recognize  the  Tower  of  Hippicus,  the 
Mosque  of  Omar,  the  Damascus  Gate,  the  Mount  of  Olives, 


GATE   OP   JERUSALEM. 


the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  the  Tower  of  David,  and  the  Gar 
den  of  Gethsemane — and  dating  from  these  landmarks  could 
tell  very  nearly  the  localities  of  many  others  we  were  not  able 
to  distinguish. 


JERUSALEM.  557 

I  record  it  here  as  a  notable  but  not  discreditable  fact  that 
not  even  our  pilgrims  wept.  I  think  there  was  no  individual 
in  the  party  whose  brain  was  not  teeming  with  thoughts  and 
images  and  memories  invoked  by  the  grand  history  of  the  ven 
erable  city  that  lay  before  us,  but  still  among  them  all  was  no 
"  voice  of  them  that  wept." 

There  was  no  call  for  tears.  Tears  would  have  been  out  of 
place.  The  thoughts  Jerusalem  suggests  are  full  of  poetry, 
sublimity,  and  more  than  all,  dignity.  Such  thoughts  do  not 
find  their  appropriate  expression  in  the  emotions  of  the 
nursery. 

Just  after  noon  we  entered  these  narrow,  crooked  streets, 
by  the  ancient  and  the  famed  Damascus  Gate,  and  now  for 
several  hours  I  have  been  trying  to  comprehend  that  I  am 
actually  in  the  illustrious  old  city  where  Solomon  dwelt,  where 
Abraham  held  converse  with  the  Deity,  and  where  walls  still 
stand  that  witnessed  the  spectacle  of  the  Crucifixion. 


CHAPTEE   LIII. 

A  FAST  walker  could  go  outside  the  walls  of  Jerusalem 
and  walk  entirely  around  the  city  in  an  hour.  I  do  not 
know  how  else  to  make  one  understand  how  small  it  is.  The 
appearance  of  the  city  is  peculiar.  It  is  as  knobby  with  count 
less  little  domes  as  a  prison  door  is  with  bolt-heads.  Every 
house  has  from  one  to  half  a  dozen  of  these  white  plastered 
domes  of  stone,  broad  and  low,  sitting  in  the  centre  of,  or  in  a 
cluster  upon,  the  flat  roof.  Wherefore,  when  one  looks  down 
from  an  eminence,  upon  the  compact  mass  of  houses  (so  close 
ly  crowded  together,  in  fact,  that  there  is  no  appearance  of 
streets  at  all,  and  so  the  city  looks  solid,)  he  sees  the  knobbiest 
town  in  the  world,  except  Constantinople.  It  looks  as  if  it 
might  be  roofed,  from  centre  to  circumference,  with  inverted 
saucers.  The  monotony  of  the  view  is  interrupted  only  by  the 
great  Mosque  of  Omar,  the  Tower  of  Hippicus,  and  one  or  two 
other  buildings  that  rise  into  commanding  prominence. 

The  houses  are  generally  two  stories  high,  built  strongly  of 
masonry,  whitewashed  or  plastered  outside,  and  have  a  cage 
of  wooden  lattice-work  projecting  in  front  of  every  window. 
To  reproduce  a  Jerusalem  street,  it  would  only  be  necessary  to 
up-end  a  chicken-coop  and  hang  it  before  each  window  in  an 
alley  of  American  houses. 

The  streets  are  roughly  and  badly  paved  with  stone,  and 
are  tolerably  crooked — enough  so  to  make  each  street  appear 
to  close  together  constantly  and  come  to  an  end  about  a  hun 
dred  yards  ahead  of  a  pilgrim  as  long  as  he  chooses  to  walk  in 
it.  Projecting  from  the  top  of  the  lower  story  of  many  of  the 


JERUSALEM. 


559 


houses  is  a  very  narrow  porcli-roof  or  shed,  without  supports 
from  below ;  and  I  have  several  times  seen  cats  jump  across 
the  street  from  one  shed  to  the  other  when  they  were  out  call 
ing.  The  cats  could  have  jumped  double  the  distance  without 
extraordinary  exertion.  I  mention  these  things  to  give  an  idea 
of  how  narrow  the  streets  are.  Since  a  cat  can  jump  across 
them  without  the  least  inconvenience,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
state  that  such  streets  are  too  narrow  for  carriages.  These 
vehicles  can  not  navigate  the  Holy  City. 

The  population  of  Jerusalem  is  compose  of  Moslems,  Jews, 
Greeks,  Latins,  Armenians,  Syrians,  Copts,  Abyssinians,  Greek 
Catholics,  and  a  handful  of  Protestants.  One  hundred  of  the 
latter  sect  are  all  that  dwell  now  in  this  birthplace  of  Chris 
tianity.  The  nice  shades  of  nationality  comprised  in  the  above 
list,  and  the  languages  spoken  by  them,  are  altogether  too 
numerous  to 
mention.  It 
seems  to  me 
that  all  the 
races  and 
colors  and 
tongues  of  the 
earth  must  be 
represented 
among  the 
fourteen  thou- 
sand  souls 
that  dwell  in 
Jerusalem. 
Hags,  wretch 
edness,  pover 
ty  and  dirt,  those  signs  and  symbols  that  indicate  the  presence 
of  Moslem  rule  more  surely  than  the  crescent-flag  itself, 
abound.  Lepers,  cripples,  the  blind,  and  the  idiotic,  assail  you 
on  every  hand,  and  they  know  but  one  word  of  but  one  lan 
guage  apparently — the  eternal  "  bucksheesh."  To  see  the 
numbers  of  maimed,  malformed  and  diseased  humanity  that 


BEGGARS   IX   JERUSALEM. 


560  THE     HOLY    SEPULCHRE. 

throng  the  holy  places  and  obstruct  the  gates,  one  might  sup 
pose  that  the  ancient  days  had  come  again,  and  that  the  angel 
of  the  Lord  was  expected  to  descend  at  any  moment  to  stir  the 
waters  of  Bethesda.  Jerusalem  is  mournful,  and  dreary,  and 
lifeless.  I  would  not  desire  to  live  here. 

One  naturally  goes  first  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  It  is  right 
in  the  city,  near  the  western  gate  ;  it  and  the  place  of  the  Cru 
cifixion,  and,  in  fact,  every  other  place  intimately  connected 
with  that  tremendous  event,  are  ingeniously  massed  together 
and  covered  by  one  roof — the  dome  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre. 

Entering  the  building,  through  the  midst  of  the  usual  assem 
blage  of  beggars,  one  sees  on  his  left  a  few  Turkish  guards — 
for  Christians  of  different  sects  will  not  only  quarrel,  but  fight, 
also,  in  this  sacred  place,  if  allowed  to  do  it.  Before  you  is  a 
marble  slab,  which  covers  the  Stone  of  Unction,  whereon  the 
Saviour's  body  was  laid  to  prepare  it  for  burial.  It  was  found 
necessary  to  conceal  the  real  stone  in  this  way  in  order  to  save 
it  from  destruction.  Pilgrims  were  too  much  given  to  chip 
ping  off  pieces  of  it  to  carry  home.  Near  by  is  a  circular  rail 
ing  which  marks  the  spot  where  the  Virgin  stood  when  the 
Lord's  body  was  anointed. 

Entering  the  great  Rotunda,  we  stand  before  the  most  sacred 
locality  in  Christendom — the  grave  of  Jesus.  It  is  in  the 
centre  of  the  church,  and  immediately  under  the  great  dome. 
It  is  inclosed  in  a  sort  of  little  temple  of  yellow  and  white 
stone,  of  fanciful  design.  Within  the  little  temple  is  a  portion 
of  the  very  stone  which  was  rolled  away  from  the  door  of  the 
Sepulchre,  and  on  which  the  angel  was  sitting  when  Mary 
came  thither  "  at  early  dawn."  Stooping  low,  we  enter  the 
vault — the  Sepulchre  itself.  It  is  only  about  six  feet  by  seven, 
and  the  stone  couch  on  which  the  dead  Saviour  lay  extends 
from  end  to  end  of  the  apartment  and  occupies  half  its  width. 
It  is  covered  with  a  marble  slab  which  has  been  much  worn  by 
the  lips  of  pilgrims.  This  slab  serves  as  an  altar,  now.  Over 
it  hang  some  fifty  gold  and  silver  lamps,  which  are  kept  always 
burning,  and  the  place  is  otherwise  scandalized  by  trumpery 
gewgaws  and  tawdry  ornamentation. 


THE     HOLY    SEPULCHRE.  561 

All  sects  of  Christians  (except  Protestants,)  have  chapels 
under  the  roof  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  each 
must  keep  to  itself  and  not  venture  upon  another's  ground.  It 
has  been  proven  conclusively  that  they  can  not  worship  together 
around  the  grave  of  the  Saviour  of  the  World  in  peace.  The 
chapel  of  the  Syrians  is  not  handsome ;  that  of  the  Copts  is 
the  humblest  of  them  all.  It  is  nothing  but  a  dismal  cavern, 
roughly  hewn  in  the  living  rock  of  the  Hill  of  Calvary.  In 
one  side  of  it  two  ancient  tombs  are  hewn,  which  are  claimed 
to  be  those  in  which  Nicodemus  and  Joseph  of  Aramathea 
were  buried. 

As  we  moved  among  the  great  piers  and  pillars  of  another 
part  of  the  church,  we  came  upon  a  party  of  black-robed, 
animal-looking  Italian  monks,  with  candles  in  their  hands,  who 
were  chanting  something  in  Latin,  and  going  through  some 
kind  of  religious  performance  around  a  disk  of  white  marble 
let  into  the  floor.  It  was  there  that  the  risen  Saviour  appeared 
to  Mary  Magdalen  in  the  likeness  of  a  gardener.  Near  by 
was  a  similar  stone,  shaped  like  a  star — here  the  Magdalen 
herself  stood,  at  the  same  time.  Monks  were  performing  in 
this  place  also.  They  perform  every  where — all  over  the  vast 
building,  and  at  all  hours.  Their  candles  are  always  flitting 
about  in  the  gloom,  and  making  the  dim  old  church  more  dis 
mal  than  there  is  any  necessity  that  it  should  be,  even  though 
it  is  a  tomb. 

We  were  shown  the  place  where  our  Lord  appeared  to  His 
mother  after  the  Resurrection.  Here,  also,  a  marble  slab  marks 
the  place  where  St.  Helena,  the  mother  of  the  Emperor  Con- 
stantine,  found  the  crosses  about  three  hundred  years  after  the 
Crucifixion.  According  to  the  legend,  this  great  discovery 
elicited  extravagant  demonstrations  of  joy.  But  they  wrere  of 
short  duration.  The  question  intruded  itself:  "Which  bore 
the  blessed  Saviour,  and  which  the  thieves  ?"  To  be  in  doubt, 
in  so  mighty  a  matter  as  this — to  be  uncertain  which  one  to 
adore — was  a  grievous  misfortune.  It  turned  the  public  joy 
to  sorrow.  But  when  lived  there  a  holy  priest  who  could  not 
set  so  simple  a  trouble  as  this  at  rest  ?  One  of  these  soon  hit 

36 


562  THE    LEGEND. 

upon  a  plan  that  would  be  a  certain  test.  A  noble  lady  lay 
very  ill  in  Jerusalem.  The  wise  priests  ordered  that  the  three 
crosses  be  taken  to  her  bedside  one  at  a  time.  It  was  done. 
When  her  eyes  fell  upon  the  first  one,  she  uttered  a  scream 
that  was  heard  beyond  the  Damascus  Gate,  and  even  upon  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  it  was  said,  and  then  fell  back  in  a  deadly 
swoon.  They  recovered  her  and  brought  the  second  cross. 
Instantly  she  went  into  fearful  convulsions,  and  it  was  with 
the  greatest  difficulty  that  six  strong  men  could  hold  her. 
They  were  afraid,  now,  to  bring  in  the  third  cross.  They  be 
gan  to  fear  that  possibly  they  had  fallen  upon  the  wrong 
crosses,  and  that  the  true  cross  was  not  with  this  number  at 
all.  However,  as  the  wroman  seemed  likely  to  die  with  the 
convulsions  that  were  tearing  her,  they  concluded  that  the  third 
could  do  no  more  than  put  her  out  of  her  misery  with  a  happy 
dispatch.  So  they  brought  it,  and  behold,  a  miracle !  The 
woman  sprang  from  her  bed,  smiling  and  joyful,  and  perfectly 
restored  to  health.  When  we  listen  to  evidence  like  this,  we 
can  not  but  believe.  We  would  be  ashamed  to  doubt,  and 
properly,  too.  Even  the  very  part  of  Jerusalem  where  this  all 
occurred  is  there  yet.  So  there  is  really  no  room  for  doubt. 

The  priests  tried  to  show  us,  through  a  small  screen,  a  frag 
ment  of  the  genuine  Pillar  of  Flagellation,  to  which  Christ 
was  bound  when  they  scourged  him.  But  we  could  not  see  it, 
because  it  was  dark  inside  the  screen.  However,  a  baton  is 
kept  here,  which  the  pilgrim  thrusts  through  a  hole  in  the 
screen,  and  then  he  no  longer  doubts  that  the  true  Pillar  of 
Flagellation  is  in  there.  He  can  not  have  any  excuse  to  doubt 
it,  for  he  can  feel  it  with  the  stick.  He  can  feel  it  as  distinctly 
as  he  could  feel  any  thing. 

Not  far  from  here  was  a  niche  where  they  used  to  preserve 
a  piece  of  the  True  Cross,  but  it  is  gone,  now.  This  piece  of 
the  cross  was  discovered  in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  Latin 
priests  say  it  was  stolen  away,  long  ago,  by  priests  of  another 
sect.  That  seems  like  a  hard  statement  to  make,  but  \ve  know 
very  well  that  it  was  stolen,  because  we  have  seen  it  ourselves 
in  several  of  the  cathedrals  of  Italy  and  France. 


GODFREY'S   SWORD.  563 

But  the  relic  that  touched  us  most  was  the  plain  old  sword 
of  that  stout  Crusader,  Godfrey  of  Bulloigne — King  Godfrey 
of  Jerusalem.  No  blade  in  Christendom  wields  such  enchant 
ment  as  this — no  blade  of  all  that  rust  in  the  ancestral  halls 
of  Europe  is  able  to  invoke  such  visions  of  romance  in  the 
brain  of  him  who  looks  upon  it — none  that  can  prate  of  such 
chivalric  deeds  or  tell  such  brave  tales  of  the  warrior  days  of 
old.  It  stirs  within  a  man  every  memory  of  the  Holy  Wars 
that  has  been  sleeping  in  his  brain  for  years,  and  peoples  his 
thoughts  with  mail-clad  images,  with  marching  armies,  with 
battles  and  with  sieges.  It  speaks  to  him  of  Baldwin,  and 
Tancred,  the  princely  Saladin,  and  great  Richard  of  the  Lion 
Heart.  It  was  with  just  such  blades  as  these  that  these  splen 
did  heroes  of  romance  used  to  segregate  a  man,  so  to  speak, 
and  leave  the  half  of  him  to  fall  one  way  and  the  other  half 
the  other.  This  very  sword  has  cloven  hundreds  of  Saracen 
Knights  from  crown  to  chin  in  those  old  times  when  Godfrey 
wielded  it.  It  was  enchanted,  then,  by  a  genius  that  was  un 
der  the  command  of  King  Solomon.  When  danger  approached 
its  master's  tent  it  always  struck  the  shield  and  clanged  out  a 
fierce  alarm  upon  the  startled  ear  of  night.  In  times  of  doubt, 
or  in  fog  or  darkness,  if  it  were  drawn  from  its  sheath  it 
would  point  instantly  toward  the  foe,  and  thus  reveal  the  way 
— and  it  would  also  attempt  to  start  after  them  of  its  own  ac 
cord.  A  Christian  could  not  be  so  disguised  that  it  would  not 
know  him  and  refuse  to  hurt  him — nor  a  Moslem  so  disguised 
that  it  would  not  leap  from  its  scabbard  and  take  his  life. 
These  statements  are  all  well  authenticated  in  many  legends 
that  are  among  the  most  trustworthy  legends  the  good  old 
Catholic  monks  preserve.  I  can  never  forget  old  Godfrey's 
sword,  now.  I  tried  it  on  a  Moslem,  and  clove  him  in  twain 
like  a  doughnut.  The  spirit  of  Grimes  was  upon  me,  and  if 
I  had  had  a  graveyard  I  would  have  destroyed  all  the  infidels 
in  Jerusalem.  I  wiped  the  blood  off  the  old  sword  and  handed 
it  back  to  the  priest — I  did  not  want  the  fresh  gore  to  obliter 
ate  those  sacred  spots  that  crimsoned  its  brightness  one  day 
six  hundred  years  ago  and  thus  gave  Godfrey  warning  that 
before  the  sun  went  down  his  journey  of  life  would  end. 


564: 


PRISON    OF    THE     SAVIOUR. 


Still  moving  through  the  gloom  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  we  came  to  a  small  chapel,  hewn  out  of  the  rock — 


CHURCH   OF   THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE. 


a  place  which  has  been  known  as  "  The  Prison  of  Our  Lord  " 
for  many  centuries.     Tradition  says  that  here  the  Saviour  was 


THE  CENTRE  OF  THE  EARTH.         565 

confined  just  previously  to  the  crucifixion.  Under  an  altar  by 
the  door  was  a  pair  of  stone  stocks  for  human  legs.  These 
things  are  called  the  "  Bonds  of  Christ,"  and  the  use  they  were 
once  put  to  has  given  them  the  name  they  now  bear. 

The  Greek  Chapel  is  the  most  roomy,  the  richest  and  the 
showiest  chapel  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Its 
altar,  like  that  of  all  the  Greek  churches,  is  a  lofty  screen  that 
extends  clear  across  the  chapel,  and  is  gorgeous  with  gilding 
and  pictures.  The  numerous  lamps  that  hang  before  it  are  of 
gold  and  silver,  and  cost  great  sums. 

But  the  feature  of  the  place  is  a  short  column  that  rises  from 
the  middle  of  the  marble  pavement  of  the  chapel,  and  marks 
the  exact  centre  of  the  earth.  The  most  reliable  traditions  tell 
us  that  this  was  known  to  be  the  earth's  centre,  ages  ago,  and 
that  when  Christ  was  upon  earth  he  set  all  doubts  upon  the 
subject  at  rest  forever,  by  stating  with  his  own  lips  that  the 
tradition  was  correct.  Remember,  He  said  that  that  particu 
lar  column  stood  upon  the  centre  of  the  world.  If  the  centre 
of  the  world  changes,  the  column  changes  its  position  accord 
ingly.  This  column  has  moved  three  different  times,  of  its  own 
accord.  This  is  because,  in  great  convulsions  of  nature,  at 
three  different  times,  masses  of  the  earth — whole  ranges  of 
mountains,  probably — have  flown  off  into  space,  thus  lessening 
the  diameter  of  the  earth,  and  changing  the  exact  locality  of 
its  centre  by  a  point  or  two.  This  is  a  very  curious  and  inter 
esting  circumstance,  and  is  a  withering  rebuke  to  those  philos 
ophers  who  would  make  us  believe  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
any  portion  of  the  earth  to  fly  off  into  space. 

To  satisfy  himself  that  this  spot  was  really  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  a  sceptic  once  paid  well  for  the  privilege  of  ascending 
to  the  dome  of  the  church  to  see  if  the  sun  gave  him  a  shadow 
at  noon.  He  came  down  perfectly  convinced.  The  day  was 
very  cloudy  and  the  sun  threw  no  shadows  at  all ;  but  the  man 
was  satisfied  that  if  the  sun  had  come  out  and  made  shadows 
it  could  not  have  made  any  for  him.  Proofs  like  these  are  not 
to  be  set  aside  by  the  idle  tongues  of  cavilers.  To  such  as  are 
not  bigoted,  and  are  willing  to  be  convinced,  they  carry  a  con 
viction  that  nothing  can  ever  shake. 


566 


A    LONG     LOST    KELATIVE. 


If  even  greater  proofs  than  those  I  have  mentioned  are 
wanted,  to  satisfy  the  headstrong  and  the  foolish  that  this  is 
the  genuine  centre  of  the  earth,  they  are  here.  The  greatest 
of  them  lies  in  the  fact  that  from  under  this  very  column  was 
taken  the  dust  from  which  Adam  was  made.  This  can  surely 
be  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  settler.  It  is  not  likely  that  the 
original  first  man  would  have  been  made  from  an  inferior 

o 

quality  of  earth  when  it  was  entirely  convenient  to  get  first 
quality  from  the  world's  centre.  This  will  strike  any  reflect 
ing  mind  forcibly.  That  Adam  was  formed  of  dirt  procured 
in  this  very  spot  is  amply  proven  by  the  fact  that  in  six  thou 
sand  years 
no  man  has 
ever  been 
able  to 
prove  that 
the  dirt  was 
not  procured 
here  where 
of  he  was 
made. 

It  is  a 
singular  cir 
ri  u  instance 
that  right 
under  the 
roof  of  this 
same  great 
church,  and 
not  far  away 
from  that 
i  1 1  u  s  trious 
column, 
Adam  him 
self,  the  fa 
ther  of  the 
human  race, 
lies  buried.  There  is  no  question  that  he  is  actually  buried 


THE   GRAVE   OF    ADAM. 


THE     MARTYRED     SOLDIER.  567 

in  the  grave  which  is  pointed  out  as  his — there  can  be  none — 
because  it  has  never  yet  been  proven  that  that  grave  is  not 
the  grave  in  which  he  is  buried. 

o 

The  tomb  of  Adam !  How  touching  it  was,  here  in  a  land 
of  strangers,  far  away  from  home,  and  friends,  and  all  who 
cared  for  me,  thus  to  discover  the  grave  of  a  blood  relation. 
True,  a  distant  one,  ~but  still  a  relation.  The  unerring  instinct 
of  nature  thrilled  its  recognition.  The  fountain  of  my  filial 
affection  was  stirred  to  its  profoundest  depths,  and  I  gave  way 
to  tumultuous  emotion.  I  leaned  upon  a  pillar  and  burst 
into  teare.  I  deem  it  no  shame  to  have  wept  over  the  grave 
of  my  poor  dead  relative.  Let  him  who  would  sneer  at  my 
emotion  close  this  volume  here,  for  he  will  find  little  to  his 
taste  in  my  journeyings  through  Holy  Land.  Noble  old  man 
— he  did  not  live  to  see  me — he  did  not  live  to  see  his  child. 
And  I — I — alas,  I  did  not  live  to  see  him.  Weighed  down  by 
sorrow  and  disappointment,  he  died  before  I  was  born — six 
thousand  brief  summers  before  I  was  born.  But  let  us  try  to 
bear  it  with  fortitude.  Let  us  trust  that  he  is  better  off,  where 
he  is.  Let  us  take  comfort  in  the  thought  that  his  loss  is  our 
eternal  gain. 

The  next  place  the  guide  took  us  to  in  the  holy  church  was 
an  altar  dedicated  to  the  Roman  soldier  wrho  was  of  the  mili 
tary  guard  that  attended  at  the  crucifixion  to  keep  order,  and 
who — when  the  vail  of  the  Temple  was  rent  in  the  awful  dark 
ness  that  followed ;  when  the  rock  of  Golgotha  was  split  asun 
der  by  an  earthquake  ;  when  the  artillery  of  heaven  thundered, 
and  in  the  baleful  glare  of  the  lightnings  the  shrouded  dead 
flitted  about  the  streets  of  Jerusalem — shook  with  fear  and 
said,  "  Surely  this  was  the  Son  of  God  !"  Where  this  altar 
stands  now,  that  Roman  soldier  stood  then,  in  full  view  of  the 
crucified  Saviour — in  full  sight  and  hearing  of  all  the  marvels 
that  were  transpiring  far  and  wide  about  the  circumference  of 
the  Hill  of  Calvary.  And  in  this  self-same  spot  the  priests  of 
the  Temple  beheaded  him  for  those  blasphemous  words  he  had 
spoken. 

In  this  altar  they  used  to  keep  one  of  the  most  curious  relics 


568  THE     INSCRIPTION. 

that  human  eyes  ever  looked  upon — a  thing  that  had  power  to 
fascinate  the  beholder  in  some  mysterious  way  and  keep  him 
gazing  for  hours  together.  It  was  nothing  less  than  the  copper 
plate  Pilate  put  upon  the  Saviour's  cross,  and  upon  which  he 
wrote,  "  THIS  is  THE  KING  OF  THE  JEWS."  I  think  St.  Helena, 
the  mother  of  Constantine,  found  this  wonderful  memento 
when  she  was  here  in  the  third  century.  She  traveled  all  over 
Palestine,  and  was  always  fortunate.  Whenever  the  good  old 
enthusiast  found  a  thing  mentioned  in  her  Bible,  Old  or  New, 
she  would  go  and  search  for  that  thing,  and  never  stop  until 
she  found  it.  If  it  was  Adam,  she  would  find  Adam ;  if  it  was 
the  Ark,  she  would  find  the  Ark  ;  if  it  was  Goliah,  or  Joshua, 
she  would  find  them.  She  found  the  inscription  here  that  I 
was  speaking  of,  I  think.  She  found  it  in  this  very  spot,  close 
to  where  the  martyred  Roman  soldier  stood.  That  copper 
plate  is  in  one  of  the  churches  in  Rome,  now.  Any  one  can 
see  it  there.  The  inscription  is  very  distinct. 

We  passed  along  a  few  steps  and  sawr  the  altar  built  over 
the  very  spot  where  the  good  Catholic  priests  say  the  soldiers 
divided  the  raiment  of  the  Saviour. 

Then  we  went  down  into  a  cavern  which  cavilers  say  was 
once  a  cistern.  It  is  a  chapel,  now,  however — the  Chapel  of 
St.  Helena.  It  is  fifty-one  feet  long  by  forty-three  wide.  In 
it  is  a  marble  chair  which  Helena  used  to  sit  in  while  she  su 
perintended  her  workmen  when  they  were  digging  and  delving 
for  the  True  Cross.  In  this  place  is  an  altar  dedicated  to  St. 
Dimas,  the  penitent  thief.  A  new  bronze  statue  is  here — a 
statue  of  St.  Helena.  It  reminded  us  of  poor  Maximilian,  so 
lately  shot.  He  presented  it  to  this  chapel  when  he  was  about 
to  leave  for  his  throne  in  Mexico. 

From  the  cistern  we  descended  twelve  steps  into  a  large 
roughly-shaped  grotto,  carved  wholly  out  of  the  living  rock. 
Helena  blasted  it  out  when  she  was  searching  for  the  true 
cross.  She  had  a  laborious  piece  of  work,  here,  but  it  was 
richly  rewarded.  Out  of  this  place  she  got  the  crown  of 
thorns,  the  nails  of  the  cross,  the  true  cross  itself,  and  the  cross 
of  the  penitent  thief.  When  she  thought  she  had  found  every 


CHAPEL    OF    THE     MOCKING. 

thing  and  was  about  to  stop,  she  was  told  in  a  dream  to  con 
tinue  a  day  longer.  It  was  very  fortunate.  She  did  so,  and 
found  the  cross  of  the  other  thief. 

The  walls  and  roof  of  this  grotto  still  weep  bitter  tears  in 
memory  of  the  event  that  transpired  on  Calvary,  and  devout 
pilgrims  groan  and  sob  when  these  sad  tears  fall  upon  them 
from  the  dripping  rock.  The  monks  call  this  apartment  the 
"Chapel  of  the  Invention  ' of  the  Cross" — a  name  which  is 
unfortunate,  because  it  leads  the  ignorant  to  imagine  that  a 
tacit  acknowledgment  is  thus  made  that  the  tradition  that 
Helena  found  the  true  cross  here  is  a  fiction — an  invention. 
It  is  a  happiness  to  know,  however,  that  intelligent  people  do 
not  doubt  the  story  in  any  of  its  particulars. 

Priests  of  any  of  the  chapels  and  denominations  in  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  can  visit  this  sacred  grotto  to 
weep  and  pray  and  worship  the  gentle  Redeemer.  Two  differ 
ent  congregations  are  not  allowed  to  enter  at  the  same  time, 
however,  because  they  always  fight. 

Still  marching  through  the  venerable  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  among  chanting  priests  in  coarse  long  robes  and 
sandals ;  pilgrims  of  all  colors  and  many  nationalities,  in  all 
sorts  of  strange  costumes ;  under  dusky  arches  and  by  dingy 
piers  and  columns ;  through  a  sombre  cathedral  gloom  freight 
ed  with  smoke  and  incense,  and  faintly  starred  with  scores  of 
candles  that  appeared  suddenly  and  as  suddenly  disappeared, 
or  drifted  mysteriously  hither  and  thither  about  the  distant 
aisles  like  ghostly  jack-o'-lanterns — we  came  at  last  to  a  small 
chapel  which  is  called  the  "  Chapel  of  the  Mocking."  Under 
the  altar  was  a  fragment  of  a  marble  column  ;  this  was  the 
seat  Christ  sat  on  when  he  was  reviled,  and  mockingly  made 
King,  crowned  with  a  crown  of  thorns  and  sceptred  with  a 
reed.  It  was  here  that  they  blindfolded  him  and  struck  him, 
and  said  in  derision,  "  Prophesy  who  it  is  that  smote  thee." 
The  tradition  that  this  is  the  identical  spot  of  the  mocking  is 
a  very  ancient  one.  The  guide  said  that  Saewulf  was  the  first 
to  mention  it.  I  do  not  know  Saewulf,  but  still,  I  can  not 
well  refuse  to  receive  his  evidence — none  of  us  can. 


570  PLACE     OF     THE     CRUCIFIXION. 

They  showed  us  where  the  great  Godfrey  and  his  brother 
Baldwin,  the  first  Christian  Kings  of  Jerusalem,  once  lay  bu 
ried  by  that  sacred  sepulchre  they  had  fought  so  long  and  so 
valiantly  to  wrrest  from  the  hands  of  the  infidel.  But  the 
niches  that  had  contained  the  ashes  of  these  renowned  crusa 
ders  were  empty.  Even  the  coverings  of  their  tombs  were 
gone — destroyed  by  devout  members  of  the  Greek  Church, 
because  Godfrey  and  Baldwin  wrere  Latin  princes,  and  had 
been  reared  in  a  Christian  faith  whose  creed  differed  in  some 
unimportant  respects  from  theirs. 

We  passed  on,  and  halted  before  the  tomb  of  Melchisedek  ! 
You  will  remember  Melchisedek,  no  doubt ;  he  was  the  King 
who  came  out  and  levied  a  tribute  on  Abraham  the  time  that 
he  pursued  Lot's  captors  to  Dan,  and  took  all  their  property 
from  them.  That  was  about  four  thousand  years  ago,  and 
Melchisedek  died  shortly  afterward.  However,  his  tomb  is  in 
a  good  state  of  preservation. 

When  one  enters  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  the 
Sepulchre  itself  is  the  first  thing  he  desires  to  see,  and  really 
is  almost  the  first  thing  he  does  see.  The  next  thing  he  has  a 
strong  yearning  to  see  is  the  spot  where  the  Saviour  was  cru 
cified.  But  this  they  exhibit  last.  It  is  the  crowning  glory  of 
the  place.  One  is  grave  and  thoughtful  when  he  stands  in  the 
little  Tomb  of  the  Saviour — he  could  not  well  be  otherwise  in 
such  a  place — but  he  has  not  the  slightest  possible  belief  that 
ever  the  Lord  lay  there,  and  so  the  interest  he  feels  in  the  spot 
is  very,  very  greatly  marred  by  that  reflection.  He  looks  at 
the  place  where  Mary  stood,  in  another  'part  of  the  church, 
and  where  John  stood,  and  Mary  Magdalen  ;  where  the  mob 
derided  the  Lord  ;  where  the  angel  sat ;  where  the  crown  of 
thorns  was  found,  and  the  true  cross ;  where  the  risen  Saviour 
appeared — he  looks  at  all  these  places  with  interest,  but  with 
the  same  conviction  he  felt  in  the  case  of  the  Sepulchre,  that 
there  is  nothing  genuine  about  them,  and  that  they  are  imag 
inary  holy  places  created  by  the  monks.  But  the  place  of  the 
Crucifixion  affects  him  differently.  He  fully  believes  that  he 
is  looking  upon  the  very  spot  where  the  Saviour  gave  up  his 


PLACE     OF    THE     CRUCIFIXION.  571 

life.  He  remembers  that  Christ  was  very  celebrated,  long  be 
fore  he  came  to  Jerusalem ;  he  knows  that  his  fame  was  so 
great  that  crowds  followed  him  all  the  time ;  he  is  aware  that 
his  entry  into  the  city  produced  a  stirring  sensation,  and  that 
his  reception  was  a  kind  of  ovation  ;  he  can  not  overlook  the 
fact  that  when  he  was  crucified  there  were  very  many  in  Jeru 
salem  who  believed  that  he  was  the  true  Son  of  God.  To  pub 
licly  execute  such  a  personage  was  sufficient  in  itself  to  make 
the  locality  of  the  execution  a  memorable  place  for  ages ;  add 
ed  to  this,  the  storm,  the  darkness,  the  earthquake,  the  rending 
of  the  vail  of  the  Temple,  and  the  untimely  waking  of  the 
dead,  were'events  calculated  to  fix  the  execution  and  the  scene 
of  it  in  the  memory  of  even  the  most  thoughtless  witness. 
Fathers  would  tell  their  sons  about  the  strange  afftiir,  and 
point  out  the  spot ;  the  sons  would  transmit  the  story  to  their 
children,  and  thus  a  period  of  three  hundred  years  would  ea 
sily  be  spanned* — at  which  time  Helena  came  and  built  a 
church  upon  Calvary  to  commemorate  the  death  and  burial  of 
the  Lord  and  preserve  the  sacred  place  in  the  memories  of 
men  ;  since  that  time  there  has  always  been  a  church  there. 
It  is  not  possible  that  there  can  be  any  mistake  about  the  local 
ity  of  the  Crucifixion.  Not  half  a  dozen  persons  knew  where 
they  buried  the  Saviour,  perhaps,  and  a  burial  is  not  a  start 
ling  event,  any  how  ;  therefore,  we  can  be  pardoned  for  unbe 
lief  in  the  Sepulchre,  but  not  in  the  place  of  the  Crucifixion. 
Five  hundred  years  hence  there  will  be  no  vestige  of  Bunker 
Hill  Monument  left,  but  America  will  still  know  where  the 
battle  was  fought  and  where  "Warren  fell.  The  crucifixion  of 
Christ  was  too  notable  an  event  in  Jerusalem,  and  the  Hill  of 
Calvary  made  too  celebrated  by  it,  to  be  forgotten  in  the  short 
space  of  three  hundred  years.  I  climbed  the  stairway  in  the 
church  which  brings  one  to  the  top  of  the  small  inclosed  pin 
nacle  of  rock,  and  looked  upon  the  place  where  the  true  cross 
once  stood,  wTith  a  far  more  absorbing  interest  than  I  had  ever 
felt  in  any  thing  earthly  before.  I  could  not  believe  that  the 

*The  thought  is  Mr.  Prime's,  not  mine,  and  is  full  of  good  sense.     I  borrowed  it 
from  his  "  Tent  Life."— M.  T. 


572  PLACE     OF     THE     CRUCIFIXION. 

three  holes  in  the  top  of  the  rock  were  the  actual  ones  the 
crosses  stood  in,  but  I  felt  satisfied  that  those  crosses  had  stood 
so  near  the  place  now  occupied  by  them,  that  the  few  feet  of 
possible  difference  were  a  matter  of  no  consequence. 

When  one  stands  where  the  Saviour  was  crucified,  he  finds 
it  all  he  can  do  to  keep  it  strictly  before  his  mind  that  Christ 
was  not  crucified  in  a  Catholic  Church.  He  must  remind  him 
self  every  now  and  then  that  the  great  event  transpired  in  the 
open  air,  and  not  in  a  gloomy,  candle-lighted  cell  in  a  little 
corner  of  a  vast  church,  tip-stairs — a  small  cell  all  bejeweled 
and  bespangled  with  flashy  ornamentation,  in  execrable  taste, 

tinder  a  marble  altar  like  a  table,  is  a  circular  hole  in  the 
marble  floor,  corresponding  with  the  one  just  under  it  in  which 
the  true  cross  stood.  The  first  thing  every  one  does  is  to  kneel 
down  and  take  a  candle  and  examine  this  hole.  He  does  this 
strange  prospecting  with  an  amount  of  gravity  that  can  never 
be  estimated  or  appreciated  by  a  man  who  has  not  seen  the  op 
eration.  Then  he  holds  his  candle  before  a  richly  engraved  pic 
ture  of  the  Saviour,  done  on  a  massy  slab  of  gold,  and  wonder 
fully  rayed  and  starred  with  diamonds,  which  hangs  above  the 
hole  within  the  altar,  and  his  solemnity  changes  to  lively  admi 
ration.  He  rises  and  faces  the  finely  wrought  figures  of  the  Sav 
iour  and  the  malefactors  uplifted  upon  their  crosses  behind  the 
altar,  and  bright  with  a  metallic  lustre  of  many  colors.  He  turns 
next  to  the  figures  close  to  them  of  the  Virgin  and  Mary  Mag 
dalen  ;  next  to  the  rift  in  the  living  rock  made  by  the  earth 
quake  at  the  time  of  the  Crucifixion,  and  an  extension  of  which 
he  had  seen  before  in  the  wall  of  one  of  the  grottoes  below ; 
he  looks  next  at  the  show-case  with  a  figure  of  the  Yirgin  in  it, 
and  is  amazed  at  the  princely  fortune  in  precious  gems  and 
jewelry  that  hangs  so  thickly  about  the  form  as  to  hide  it  like 
a  garment  almost.  All  about  the  apartment  the  gaudy  trap 
pings  of  the  Greek  Church  offend  the  eye  and  keep  the  mind 
on  the  rack  to  remember  that  this  is  the  Place  of  the  Cruci 
fixion — Golgotha — the  Mount  of  Calvary.  And  the  last  thing 
he  looks  at  is  that  which  was  also  the  first — the  place  where 
the  true  cross  stood.  That  will  chain  him  to  the  spot  and 


PLACE    OF    THE    CRUCIFIXION.  573 

compel  him  to  look  once  more,  and  once  again,  after  he  has 
satisfied  all  curiosity  and  lost  all  interest  concerning  the  other 
matters  pertaining  to  the  locality. 

And  so  I  close  my  chapter  on  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sep 
ulchre — the  most  sacred  locality  on  earth  to  millions  and  mil 
lions  of  men,  and  women,  and  children,  the  noble  and  the 
humble,  bond  and  free.  In  its  history  from  the-first,  and  in  its 
tremendous  associations,  it  is  the  most  illustrious  edifice  in 
Christendom.  With  all  its  clap-trap  side-shows  and  unseemly 
impostures  of  every  kind,  it  is  still  grand,  reverend,  venerable 
— for  a  god  died  there  ;  for  fifteen  hundred  years  its  shrines 
have  been  wet  with  the  tears  of  pilgrims  from  the  earth's  re 
motest  confines  ;  for  more  than  two  hundred,  the  most  gallant 
knights  that  ever  wielded  sword  wasted  their  lives  away  in  a 
struggle  to  seize  it  and  hold  it  sacred  from  infidel  pollution. 
Even  in  our  own  day  a  war,  that  cost  millions  of  treasure  and 
rivers  of  blood,  was  fought  because  two  rival  nations  claimed 
the  sole  right  to  put  a  new  dome  upon  it.  History  is  full  of 
this  old  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre — full  of  blood  that  was 
shed  because  of  the  respect  and  the  veneration  in  which  men 
held  the  last  resting-place  of  the  meek  and  lowly,  the  mild  and 
gentle,  Prince  of  Peace ! 


CHAPTEE  LIV. 

WE  were  standing  in  a  narrow  street,  by  the  Tower  of 
Antonio.  "  On  these  stones  that  are  crumbling  away," 
the  guide  said,  "the  Saviour  sat  and  rested  before  taking  up  the 
cross.  This  is  the  beginning  of  the  Sorrowful  "Way,  or  the  Way 
of  Grief."  The  party  took  note  of  the  sacred  spot,  and  moved 
on.  "We  passed  under  the  "  Ecce  Homo  Arch,"  and  saw  the 
very  window  from  which  Pilate's  wife  warned  her  husband  to 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  persecution  of  the  Just  Man. 
This  window  is  in  an  excellent  state  of  preservation,  consider 
ing  its  great  age.  They  showed  us  where  Jesus  rested  the 
second  time,  and  where  the  mob  refused  to  give  him  up,  and 
said,  "  Let  his  blood  be  upon  our  heads,  and  upon  our  children's 
children  forever."  The  French  Catholics  are  building  a  church 
on  this  spot,  and  with  their  usual  veneration  for  historical 
relics,  are  incorporating  into  the  new  such  scraps  of  ancient 
walls  as  they  have  found  there.  Further  on,  we  saw  the  spot 
where  the  fainting  Saviour  fell  under  the  weight  of  his  cross. 
A  great  granite  column  of  some  ancient  temple  lay  there  at 
the  time,  and  the  heavy  cross  struck  it  such  a  blow  that  it 
broke  in  two  in  the  middle.  Such  was  the  guide's  story  when 
he  halted  us  before  the  broken  column. 

"We  crossed  a  street,  and  came  presently  to  the  former  resi 
dence  of  St.  Veronica.  "When  the  Saviour  passed  there,  she 
came  out,  full  of  womanly  compassion,  and  spoke  pitying  words 
to  him,  undaunted  by  the  hootings  and  the  threatenings  of  the 
mob,  and  wiped  the  perspiration  from  his  face  with  her  hand 
kerchief.  "We  had  heard  so  much  of  St.  Veronica,  and  seen 


THE     SORROWFUL     WAY.  575 

her  picture  by  so  many  masters,  that  it  was  like  meeting  an 
old  friend  unexpectedly  to  come  upon  her  ancient  home  in  Je 
rusalem.  The  strangest  thing  about  the  incident  that  has 
made  her  name  so  famous,  is,  that  when  she  wiped  the  perspi 
ration  away,  the  print  of  the  Saviour's  face  remained  upon  the 
handkerchief,  a  perfect  portrait,  and  so  remains  unto  this  day. 
We  knew  this,  because  we  saw  this  handkerchief  in  a  cathe 
dral  in  Paris,  in  another  in  Spain,  and  in  two  others  in  Italy. 
In  the  Milan  cathedral  it  costs  five  francs  to  see  it,  and  at  St. 
Peter's,  at  Rome,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  see  it  at  any  price. 
"No  tradition  is  so  amply  verified  as  this  of  St.  Veronica  and 
her  handkerchief. 

At  the  next  corner  we  saw  a  deep  indention  in  the  hard  stone 
masonry  of  the  corner  of  a  house,  but  might  have  gone  heed 
lessly  by  it  but  that  the  guide  said  it  was  made  by  the  elbow 
of  the  Saviour,  who  stumbled  here  and  fell.  Presently  we 
came  to  just  such  another  indention  in  a  stone  wall.  The  guide 
said  the  Saviour  fell  here,  also,  and  made  this  depression  with 
his  elbow. 

There  were  other  places  where  the  Lord  fell,  and  others 
where  he  rested ;  but  one  of  the  most  curious  landmarks  of 
ancient  history  we  found  on  this  morning  walk  through  the 
crooked  lanes  that  lead  toward  Calvary,  was  a  certain  stone 
built  into  a  house — a  stone  that  was  so  seamed  and  scarred 
that  it  bore  a  sort  of  grotesque  resemblance  to  the  human  face. 
The  projections  that  answered  for  cheeks  were  worn  smooth  by 
the  passionate  kisses  of  generations  of  pilgrims  from  distant 
lands.  We  asked  "  Why  ?"  The  guide  said  it  was  because 
this  was  one  of  "  the  very  stones  of  Jerusalem  "  that  Christ 
mentioned  when  he  was  reproved  for  permitting  the  people  to 
cry  "  Hosannah  !"  when  he  made  his  memorable  entry  into  the 
city  upon  an  ass.  One  of  the  pilgrims  said,  "  But  there  is  no 
evidence  that  the  stones  did  cry  out — Christ  said  that  if  the 
people  stopped  from  shouting  Hosannah,  the  very  stones  would 
do  it."  The  guide  was  perfectly  serene.  He  said,  calmly, 
"  This  is  one  of  the  stones  that  would  have  cried  out."  It  was 
of,  little  use  to  try  to  shake  this  fellow's  simple  faith — it  was 
easy  to  see  that. 


576  THE    WANDERING    JEW. 

And  so  we  came  at  last  to  another  wonder,  of  deep  and 
abiding  interest — the  veritable  house  where  the  unhappy 
wretch  once  lived  who  has  been  celebrated  in  song  and  story 
for  more  than  eighteen  hundred  years  as  the  Wandering  Jew. 
On  the  memorable  day  of  the  Crucifixion  he  stood  in  this  old 
doorway  with  his  arms  akimbo,  looking  out  upon  the  strug 
gling  mob  that  was  approaching,  and  when  the  weary  Saviour 
would  Ifave  sat  down  and  rested  him  a  moment,  pushed  him 
rudely  away  and  said,  "  Move  on !"  The  Lord  said,  "  Move 
on,  thou,  likewise,"  and  the  command  has  never  been  revoked 
from  that  day  to  this.  All  men  know  how  that  the  miscreant 
upon  whose  head  that  just  curse  fell  has  roamed  up  and  down 
the  wide  world,  for  ages  and  ages,  seeking  rest  and  never  find 
ing  it — courting  death  but  always  in  vain — longing  to  stop,  in 
city,  in  wilderness,  in  desert  solitudes,  yet  hearing  always  that 
relentless  warning  to  march — march  on !  They  say — do  these 
hoary  traditions — that  when  Titus  sacked  Jerusalem  and 
slaughtered  eleven  hundred  thousand  Jews  in  her  streets  and 
by-ways,  the  Wandering  Jew  was  seen  always  in  the  thickest 
of  the  fight,  and  that  when  battle-axes  gleamed  in  the  air,  he 
bowed  his  head  beneath  them ;  when  swords  flashed  their 
deadly  lightnings,  he  sprang  in  their  way  ;  he  bared  his  breast 
to  whizzing  javelins,  to  hissing  arrows,  to  any  and  to  every 
weapon  that  promised  death  and  forgetfulness,  and  rest.  But 
it  was  useless — he  walked  forth  out  of  the  carnage  without  a 
wound.  And  it  is  said  that  five  hundred  years  afterward  he 
followed  Mahomet  when  he  carried  destruction  to  the  cities  of 
Arabia,  and  then  turned  against  him,  hoping  in  this  way  to 
win  the  death  of  a  traitor.  His  calculations  were  wrong 
again.  ~No  quarter  was  given  to  any  living  creature  but  one, 
and  that  was  the  only  one  of  all  the  host  that  did  not  want  it. 
He  sought  death  five  hundred  years  later,  in  the  wars  of  the 
Crusades,  and  offered  himself  to  famine  and  pestilence  at  As- 
calon.  He  escaped  again — he  could  not  die.  These  repeated 
annoyances  could  have  at  last  but  one  effect — they  shook  his 
confidence.  Since  then  the  Wandering  Jew  has  carried  on  a 
kind  of  desultory  toying  with  the  most  promising  of  the  aids 


THE     WANDERING    JEW. 


577 


and  implements  of  destruction,  but  with  small  hope,  as  a  gen 
eral  thing.  lie  has  speculated  some  in  cholera  and  railroads, 
and  has  taken  almost  a  lively  interest  in  infernal  machines  and 
patent  medicines.  He  is  old,  now,  and  grave,  as  becomes  an 
age  like  his ;  he  indulges  in  no  light  amusements  save  that  he 
goes  sometimes  to  executions,  and  is  fond  of  funerals. 

There  is  one  thing  he  can  not  avoid  ;  go  where  he  will  about 
the  world,  he  must  never  fail  to  report  in  Jerusalem  every  fif 
tieth  year.  Only  a  year  or  two  ago  he  was  here  for  the  thirty- 
seventh  time  since  Jesus  was  crucified  on  Calvary.  They  say 
that  many  old  people,  who  are  here  now,  saw  him  then,  and 


TilE    WANDERING   JEW. 


had  seen  him  before.  He  looks  always  the  same — old,  and 
withered,  and  hollow-eyed,  and  listless,  save  that  there  is  about 
him  something  which  seems  to  suggest  that  he  is  looking  for  some 
one,  expecting  some  one — the  friends  of  his  youth,  perhaps. 
But  the  most  of  them  are  dead,  now.  He  always  pokes  about  the 

37 


578  THE    WANDERING    JEW. 

old  streets  looking  lonesome,  making  his  mark  on  a  wall  here 
and  there,  and  eyeing  the  oldest  buildings  with  a  sort  of  friendly 
half  interest ;  and  he  sheds  a  few  tears  at  the  threshold  of  his 
ancient  dwelling,  and  bitter,  bitter  tears  they  are.  Then  he  col 
lects  his  rent  and  leaves  again.  He  has  been  seen  standing  near 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  on  many  a  starlight  night, 
for  he  has  cherished  an  idea  for  many  centuries  that  if  he  could 
only  enter  there,  he  could  rest.  But  when  he  approaches,  the 
doors  slam  to  with  a  crash,  the  earth  trembles,  and  all  the  lights 
in  Jerusalem  burn  a  ghastly  blue !  He  does  this  every  fifty 
years,  just  the  same.  It  is  hopeless,  but  then  it  is  hard  to  break 
habits  one  has  been  eighteen  hundred  years  accustomed  to. 
The  old  tourist  is  far  away  on  his  wanderings,  now.  How  he 
must  smile  to  see  a  pack  of  blockheads  like  us,  galloping  about 
the  world,  and  looking  wise,  and  imagining  we  are  finding 
out  a  good  deal  about  it !  He  must  have  a  consuming  con 
tempt  for  the  ignorant,  complacent  asses  that  go  skurrying 
about  the  world  in  these  railroading  days  and  call  it  traveling. 
When  the  guide  pointed  out  where  the  Wandering  Jew  had 
left  his  familiar  mark  upon  a  wall,  I  was  filled  with  astonish 
ment.  It  read : 

"S.  T.— 1860— X." 

All  I  have  revealed  about  the  Wandering  Jew  can  be  amply 
proven  by  reference  to  our  guide. 

The  mighty  Mosque  of  Omar,  and  the  paved  court  around 
it,  occupy  a  fourth  part  of  Jerusalem.  They  are  upon  Mount 
Moriah,  where  King  Solomon's  Temple  stood.  This  Mosque  is 
the  holiest  place  the  Mohammedan  knows,  outside  of  Mecca. 
Up  to  within  a  year  or  two  past,  no  Christian  could  gain  ad 
mission  to  it  or  its  court  for  love  or  money.  But  the  prohibi 
tion  has  been  removed,  and  we  entered  freely  for  bucksheesh. 

I  need  not  speak  of  the  wronderful  beauty  and  the  exquisite 
grace  and  symmetry  that  have  made  this  Mosque  so  celebrated 
— because  I  did  not  see  them.  One  can  not  see  such  things  at 
an  instant  glance — one  frequently  only  finds  out  how  really 
beautiful  a  really  beautiful  woman  is  after  considerable  ac- 


ROCK.  579 

quaintance  with  her ;  and  the  rule  applies  to  Niagara  Falls,  to 
majestic  mountains  and  to  mosques — especially  to  mosques. 

The  great  feature  of  the  Mosque  of  Omar  is  the  prodigious 
rock  in  the  centre  of  its  rotunda.  It  was  upon  this  rock  that 
Abraham  came  eo  near  offering  up  his  son  Isaac — this,  at 
least,  is  authentic — it  is  very  much  more  to  be  relied  on  than 
most  of  the  traditions,  at  any  rate.  On  this  rock,  also,  the 
angel  stood  and  threatened  Jerusalem,  and  David  persuaded 
him  to  spare  the  city.  Mahomet  was  well  acquainted  with 
this  stone.  From  it  he  ascended  to  heaven.  The  stone  tried 
to  follow  him,  and  if  the  angel  Gabriel  had  not  happened  by 
the  merest  good  luck  to  be  there  to  seize  it,  it  would  have  done 
it.  Very  few  people  have  a  grip  like  Gabriel — the  prints  of 
his  monstrous  fingers,  two  inches  deep,  are  to  be  seen  in  that 
rock  to-day. 

This  rock,  large  as  it  is,  is  suspended  in  the  air.  It  does  not 
touch  any  thing  at  all.  The  guide  said  so.  This  is  very  won 
derful.  In  the  place  on  it  where  Mahomet  stood,  he  left  his 
foot-prints  in  the  solid  stone.  I  should  judge  that  he  wore 
about  eighteens.  But  what  I  was  going  to  say,  when  I  spoke 
of  the  rock  being  suspended,  was,  that  in  the  floor  of  the  cav 
ern  under  it  they  showed  us  a  slab  which  they  said  covered  a 
hole  which  was  a  thing  of  extraordinary  interest  to  all  Mo 
hammedans,  because  that  hole  leads  down  to  perdition,  and 
every  soul  that  is  transferred  from  thence  to  Heaven  must 
pass  up  through  this  orifice.  Mahomet  stands  there  and  lifts 
them  out  by  the  hair.  All  Mohammedans  shave  their  heads, 
but  they  are  careful  to  leave  a  lock  of  hair  for  the  Prophet  to 
take  hold  of.  Our  guide  observed  that  a  good  Mohammedan 
would  consider  himself  doomed  to  stay  with  the  damned  for 
ever  if  he  were  to  lose  his  scalp-lock  and  die  before  it  grew 
again.  The  most  of  them  that  I  have  seen  ought  to  stay  with 
the  damned,  any  how,  without  reference  to  how  they  were 
barbered. 

For  several  ages  no  woman  has  been  allowed  to  enter  the 
cavern  where  that  important  hole  is.  The  reason  is  that  one 
of  the  sex  was  once  caught  there  blabbing  every  thing  she 


580  THE     GREAT    MOSQUE. 

knew  about  what  was  going  on  above  ground,  to  the  rapscal 
lions  in  the  infernal  regions  down  below.  She  carried  her  gos 
siping  to  such  an  extreme  that  nothing  could  be  kept  private 
— nothing  could  be  done  or  said  on  earth  but  every  body  in 
perdition  knew  all  about  it  before  the  sun  went  down.  It 
was  about  time  to  suppress  this  woman's  telegraph,  and  it  was 
promptly  done.  Her  breath  subsided  about  the  same  time. 

The  inside  of  the  great  mosque  is  very  showy  with  variega 
ted  marble  walls  and  with  windows  and  inscriptions  of  elabo 
rate  mosaic.  The  Turks  have  their  sacred  relics,  like  the 
Catholics.  The  guide  showed  us  the  veritable  armor  worn  by 
the  great  son-in-law  and  successor  of  Mahomet,  and  also  the 
buckler  of  Mahomet's  uncle.  The  great  iron  railing  which 
surrounds  the  rock  was  ornamented  in  one  place  with  a  thou 
sand  rags  tied  to  its  open  work.  These  are  to  remind  Maho 
met  not  to  forget  the  worshipers  who  placed  them  there. 
It  is  considered  the  next  best  thing  to  tying  threads  around  his 
finger  by  way  of  reminders. 

Just  outside  the  mosque  is  a  miniature  temple,  which  marks 
the  spot  where  David  and  Goliah  used  to  sit  and  judge  the 
people.* 

Every  where  about  the  Mosque  of  Omar  are  portions  of  pil 
lars,  curiously  wrought  altars,  and  fragments  of  elegantly 
carved  marble — precious  remains  of  Solomon's  Temple.  These 
have  been  dug  from  all  depths  in  the  soil  and  rubbish  of 
Mount  Moriah,  and  the  Moslems  have  always  shown  a  disposi 
tion  to  preserve  them  with  the  utmost  care.  At  that  portion 
of  the  ancient  wall  of  Solomon's  Temple  which  is  called  the 
Jew's  Place  of  Wailing,  and  where  the  Hebrews  assemble 
every  Friday  to  kiss  the  venerated  stones  and  weep  over  the 
fallen  greatness  of  Zion,  any  one  can  see  a  part  of  the  unques 
tioned  and  undisputed  Temple  of  Solomon,  the  same  consisting 
of  three  or  four  stones  lying  one  upon  the  other,  each  of  which 
is  about  twice  as  long  as  a  seven-octave  piano,  and  about  as  thick 
as  such  a  piano  is  high.  But,  as  I  have  remarked  before,  it  is 

*  A  pilgrim  informs  me  that  it  wns  not  David  and  Goliah,  but  David  and  Saul.  I 
stick  to  my  own  statement — the  guide  told  me,  and  he  ought  to  know. 


FRAGMENTS    OF    THE    TEMPLE. 


581 


only  a  year  or  two  ago  that  the  ancient  edict  prohibiting 
Christian  rubbish  like  ourselves  to  enter  the  Mosque  of  Omar 
and  see  the  costly  marbles  that  once  adorned  the  inner  Temple 
was  annulled.  The  designs  wrought  upon  these  fragments  are 
all  quaint  and  peculiar,  and  so  the  charm  of  novelty  is  added 
to  the  deep  interest  they  naturally  inspire.  One  meets  with 
these  venerable  scraps  at  every  turn,  especially  in  the  neighbor 
ing  Mosque  el  Aksa,  into  whose  inner  walls  a  very  large  num 
ber  of  them  are  carefully  built  for  preservation.  These  pieces 
of  stone,  stained  and  dusty  with  age,  dimly  hint  at  a  grandeur 
we  have  all  been  taught  to  regard  as  the  princeliest  ever  seen 
on  earth ;  and  they  call  up  pictures  of  a  pageant  that  is  familiar 


MOSQUE  OF   OMAit. 

to  all  imaginations — camels  laden  with  spices  and  treasure — 
beautiful  slaves,  presents  for  Solomon's  harem — a  long  cavalcade 
of  richly  caparisoned  beasts  and  warriors — and  Sheba's  Queen  in 
the  van  of  this  vision  of  "  Oriental  magnificence."  These  ele 
gant  fragments  bear  a  richer  interest  than  the  solemn  vastness, 
of  the  stones  the  Jews  kiss  in  the  Place  of  Wailing  can  ever 
have  for  the  heedless  sinner. 

Down  in  the  hollow  ground,  underneath  the  olives  and  the 


582  SURFEITED     WITH    SIGHTS. 

orange-trees  that  flourish  in  the  court  of  the  great  Mosque,  is 
a  wilderness  of  pillars — remains  of  the  ancient  Temple  ;  they 
supported  it.  There  are  ponderous  archways  down  there, 
also,  over  which  the  destroying  "  plough  "  of  prophecy  passed 
harmless.  It  is  pleasant  to  know  we  are  disappointed,  in  that 
we  never  dreamed  we  might  see  portions  of  the  actual  Temple 
of  Solomon,  and  yet  experience  no  shadow  of  suspicion  that 
they  were  a  monkish  humbug  and  a  fraud. 

We  are  surfeited  with  sights.  Nothing  has  any  fascination  for 
us,  now,  but  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  We  have  been 
there  every  day,  and  have  not  grown  tired  of  it ;  but  we  are 
weary  of  every  thing  else.  The  sights  are  too  many.  They 
swarm  about  you  at  every  step ;  no  single  foot  of  ground  in  all 
Jerusalem  or  within  its  neighborhood  seems  to  be  without  a 
stirring  and  important  history  of  its  own.  It  is  a  very  relief 
to  steal  a  walk  of  a  hundred  yards  without  a  guide  along  to 
talk  unceasingly  about  every  stone  you  step  upon  and  drag  you 
back  ages  and  ages  to  the  day  when  it  achieved  celebrity. 

It  seems  hardly  real  when  I  find  myself  leaning  for  a 
moment  on  a  ruined  wall  and  looking  listlessly  down  into  the 
historic  pool  of  Bethesda.  I  did  not  think  such  things  could 
be  so  crowded  together  as  to  diminish  their  interest.  But  in 
serious  truth,  we  have  been  drifting  about,  for  several  days, 
using  our  eyes  and  our  ears  more  from  a  sense  of  duty  than 
any  higher  and  worthier  reason.  And  too  often  we  have  been 
glad  when  it  was  time  to  go  home  and  be  distressed  no  more 
about  illustrious  localities. 

Our  pilgrims  compress  too  much  into  one  day.  One  can 
gorge  sights  to  repletion  as  well  as  sweetmeats.  Since  we 
breakfasted,  this  morning,  we  have  seen  enough  to  have  fur 
nished  us  food  for  a  year's  reflection  if  we  could  have  seen 
the  various  objects  in  comfort  and  looked  upon  them  deliber 
ately.  We  visited  the  pool  of  Hezekiah,  where  David  saw 
Uriah's  wife  coming  from  the  bath  and  fell  in  love  with  her. 

We  went  out  of  the  city  by  the  Jaffa  gate,  and  of  course 
were  told  many  things  about  its  Tower  of  Hippicus. 

We  rode  across  the  Valley  of  Hinnom,  between  two  of  the 


SURFEITED     WITH    SIGHTS.  583 

Pools  of  Gihon,  and  by  an  aqueduct  built  by  Solomon,  which 
still  conveys  water  to  the  city.  We  ascended  the  Hill  of  Evil 
Counsel,  where  Judas  received  his  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  and 
we  also  lingered  a  moment  under  the  tree  a  venerable  tradition 
says  he  hanged  himself  on. 

We  descended  to  the  canon  again,  and  then  the  guide  began 
to  give  name  and  history  to  every  bank  and  boulder  we  came 
to :  "  This  was  the  Field  of  Blood ;  these  cuttings  in 
the  rocks  were  shrines  and  temples  of  Moloch ;  here  they  sac 
rificed  children  ;  yonder  is  the  Zion  Gate ;  the  Tyropean  Val 
ley  ;  the  Hill  of  Ophel ;  here  is  the  junction  of  the  Valley  of 
Jehoshaphat — on  your  right  is  the  Well  of  Job."  We  turned 
up  Jehoshaphat.  The  recital  went  on.  "  This  is  the  Mount 
of  Olives ;  this  is  the  Hill  of  Offense ;  the  nest  of  huts  is  the 
Village  of  Siloam  ;  here,  yonder,  every  where,  is  the  King's 
Garden ;  under  this  great  tree  Zacharias,  the  high  priest,  was 
murdered  ;  yonder  is  Mount  Moriah  and  the  Temple  wall ;  the 
tomb  of  Absalom  ;  the  tomb  of  St.  James  ;  the  tomb  of  Zach 
arias  ;  beyond,  are  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  and  the  tomb  of 
the  Virgin  Mary ;  here  is  the  Pool  of  Siloam,  and— 

We  said  we  would  dismount,  and  quench  our  thirst,  and 
rest.  We  were  burning  up  with  the  heat.  We  were  failing 
under  the  accumulated  fatigue  of  days  and  days  of  ceaseless, 
marching.  All  wrere  willing. 

The  Pool  is  a  deep,  walled  ditch,  through  which  a  clear 
stream  of  water  runs,  that  comes  from  under  Jerusalem  some 
where,  and  passing  through  the  Fountain  of  the  Virgin,  or 
being  supplied  from  it,  reaches  this  place  by  way  of  a  tunnel 
of  heavy  masonry.  The  famous  pool  looked  exactly  as  it 
looked  in  Solomon's  time,  no  doubt,  and  the  same  dusky,  Ori 
ental  women,  came  down  in  their  old  Oriental  way,  and  car 
ried  oft  jars  of  the  water  on  their  heads,  just  as  they  did  three 
thousand  years  ago,  and  just  as  they  will  do;  fifty  thousand 
years  hence  if  any  of  them  are  still  left  on  earth. 

We  went  away  from  there  and  stopped  at  the  Fountain  of 
the  Virgin.  But  the  water  was  not  good,  and  there  was  no 
comfort  or  peace  any  where,  on  accoimt.  of  the  regiment  of  boys 


584  THE     GOLDEN     GATE. 

and  girls  and  beggars  that  persecuted  us  all  the  time  for  buck- 
sheesh.  The  guide  wanted  us  to  give  them  some  money,  and 
we  did  it ;  but  when  he  went  on  to  say  that  they  were  starving 
to  death  we  could  not  but  feel  that  we  had  done  a  great  sin  in 
throwing  obstacles  in  the  way  of  such  a  desirable  consumma 
tion,  and  so  we  tried  to  collect  it  back,  but  it  could  not  be 
done. 

We  entered  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  and  we  visited  the 
Tomb  of  the  Virgin,  both  of  which  we  had  seen  before.  It  is 
not  meet  that  I  should  speak  of  them  now.  A  more  fitting 
time  will  come. 

I  can  not  speak  now  of  the  Mount  of  Olives  or  its  view  of 
Jerusalem,  the  Dead  Sea  and  the  mountains  of  Moab  ;  nor  of 
the  Damascus  Gate  or  the  tree  that  was  planted  by  King  God 
frey  of  Jerusalem.  One  ought  to  feel  pleasantly  when  he  talks 
of  these  things.  I  can  not  say  any  thing  about  the  stone  col 
umn  that  projects  over  Jehoshaphat  from  the  Temple  wall  like 
a  cannon,  except  that  the  Moslems  believe  Mahomet  will  sit 
astride  of  it  when  he  comes  to  judge  the  world.  It  is  a  pity 
he  could  not  judge  it  from  some  roost  of  his  own  in  Mecca, 
without  trespassing  on  ourlioly  ground.  Close  by  is  the  Golden 
Gate,  in  the  Temple  wall — a  gate  that  was  an  elegant  piece  of 
sculpture  in  the  time  of  the  Temple,  and  is  even  so  yet.  From 
it,  in  ancient  times,  the  Jewish  High  Priest  turned  loose  the 
scapegoat  and  let  him  flee  to  the  wilderness  and  bear  away  his 
twelve-month  load  of  the  sins  of  the  people.  If  they  were  to 
turn  one  loose  now,  he  would  not  get  as  far  as  the  Garden  of 
Gethsemane,  till  these  miserable  vagabonds  here  would  gobble 
him  up,*  sins  and  all.  They  wouldn't  care.  Mutton-chops  and 
sin  is  good  enough  living  for  them.  The  Moslems  watch  the 
Golden  Gate  writh  a  jealous  eye,  and  an  anxious  one,  for  they 
have  an  honored  tradition  that  when  it  falls,  Islamism  will  fall, 
and  with  it  the  Ottoman  Empire.  It  did  not  grieve  me  any  to 
notice  that  the  old  gate  was  getting  a  little  shaky. 

We  are  at  home  again.  We  are  exhausted.  The  sun  has 
roasted  us,  almost. 

*  Favorite  pilgrim  expression. 


COMFORTS.  585 

We  have  full  comfort  in  one  reflection,  however.  Our  expe 
riences  in  Europe  have  taught  us  that  in  time  this  fatigue  will 
be  forgotten  ;  the  heat  will  be  forgotten  ;  the  thirst,  the  tire 
some  volubility  of  the  guide,  the  persecutions  of  the  beggars 
—and  then,  all  that  will  be  left  will  be  pleasant  memories  of 
Jerusalem,  memories  we  shall  call  up  with  always  increasing 
interest  as  the  years  go  by,  memories  which  some  day  will  be 
come  all  beautiful  when  the  last  annoyance  that  incumbers 
them  shall  have  faded  out  of  our  minds  never  again  to  return. 
School-boy  days  are  no  happier  than  the  days  of  after  life,  but 
we  look  back  upon  them  regretfully  because  we  have  forgotten 
our  punishments  at  school,  and  how  we  grieved  when  our  mar 
bles  were  lost  and  our  kites  destroyed — because  we  have  for 
gotten  all  the  sorrows  and  privations  of  that  canonized  epoch 
and  remember  only  its  orchard  robberies,  its  wooden  sword  pa 
geants  and  its  fishing  holydays.  We  are  satisfied.  We  can 
wait.  Our  reward  will  come.  To  us,  Jerusalem  and  to-day's 
experiences  will  be  an  enchanted  memory  a  year  hence — a 
memory  which  money  could  not  buy  from  us. 


OHAPTEE   LV. 

"TTT^E  cast   up   the   account.     It  footed  up  pretty  fairly. 

V  V  There  was  nothing  more  at  Jerusalem  to  be  seen,  ex 
cept  the  traditional  houses  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  of  the  para 
ble,  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings,  and  those  of  the  Judges ;  the 
spot  where  they  stoned  one  of  the  disciples  to  death,  and  be 
headed  another ;  the  room  and  the  table  made  celebrated  by 
the  Last  Supper ;  the  fig-tree  that  Jesus  withered  ;  a  number 
of  historical  places  about  Gethsemane  and  the  Mount  of  Olives, 
and  fifteen  or  twenty  others  in  different  portions  of  the  city 
itself. 

We  were  approaching  the  end.  Human  nature  asserted  it 
self,  now.  Overwork  and  consequent  exhaustion  began  to 
have  their  natural  effect.  They  began  to  master  the  energies 
and  dull  the  ardor  of  the  party.  Perfectly  secure  now,  against 
failing  to  accomplish  any  detail  of  the  pilgrimage,  they  felt 
like  drawing  in  advance  upon  the  holy  day  soon  to  be  placed  to 
their  credit.  They  grew  a  little  lazy.  They  were  late  to 
breakfast  and  sat  long  at  dinner.  Thirty  or  forty  pilgrims  had 
arrived  from  the  ship,  by  the  short  routes,  and  much  swapping 
of  gossip  had  to  be  indulged  in.  And  in  hot  afternoons,  they 
showed  a  strong  disposition  to  lie  on  the  cool  divans  in  the 
hotel  and  smoke  and  talk  about  pleasant  experiences  of  a 
month  or  so  gone  by — for  even  thus  early  do  episodes  of  travel 
which  were  sometimes  annoying,  sometimes  exasperating  and 
full  as  often  of  no  consequence  at  all  when  they  transpired, 
begin  to  rise  above  the  dead  level  of  monotonous  reminiscences 
and  become  shapely  landmarks  in  one's  memory.  The  fog- 


CHARMS     OF     NOMADIC     LIFE.  587 

whistle,  smothered  among  a  million  of  trifling  sounds,  is  not  no 
ticed  a  block  away,  in  the  city,  but  the  sailor  hears  it  far  at  sea, 
whither  none  of  those  thousands  of  trifling  sounds  can  reach. 
When  one  is  in  Rome,  all  the  domes  are  alike  ;  but  when  he  has 
gone  away  twelve  miles,  the  city  fades  utterly  from  sight  and 
leaves  St.  Peter's  swelling  above  the  level  plain  like  an  an 
chored  balloon.  When  one  is  traveling  in  Europe,  the  daily 
incidents  seem  all  alike  ;  but  when  he  has  placed  them  all  two 
months  and  two  thousand  miles  behind  him,  those  that  were 
worthy  of  being  remembered  are  prominent,  and  those  that 
were  really  insignificant  have  vanished.  This  disposition  to 
smoke,  and  idle  and  talk,  was  not  well.  It  was  plain  that  it 
must  not  be  allowed  to  gain  ground.  A  diversion  must  be 
tried,  or  demoralization  would  ensue.  The  Jordan,  Jericho 
and  the  Dead  Sea  were  suggested.  The  remainder  of  Jeru 
salem  must  be  left  unvisited,  for  a  little  while.  The  journey 
was  approved  at  once.  New  life  stirred  in  every  pulse.  In 
the  saddle — abroad  on  the  plains — sleeping  in  beds  bounded 
only  by  the  horizon  :  fancy  was  at  work  with  these  things  in  a 
moment. — It  was  painful  to  note  how  readily  these  town-bred 
men  had  taken  to  the  free  life  of  the  camp  and  the  desert. 
The  nomadic  instinct  is  a  human  instinct ;  it  was  born  with 
Adam  and  transmitted  through  the  patriarchs,  and  after  thirty 
centuries  of  steady  effort,  civilization  has  not  educated  it  en 
tirely  out  of  us  yet.  It  has  a  charm  which,  once  tasted,  a  man 
will  yearn  to  taste  again.  The  nomadic  instinct  can  not  be 
educated  out  of  an  Indian  at  all. 

The  Jordan  journey  being  approved,  our  dragoman  was  no 
tified. 

At  nine  in  the  morning  the  caravan  was  before  the  hotel 
door  and  we  were  at  breakfast.  There  was  a  commotion  about 
the  place.  Rumors  of  war  and  bloodshed  were  flying  every 
where.  The  lawless  Bedouins  in  the  Valley  of  the  Jordan  and 
the  deserts  down  by  the  Dead  Sea  were  up  in  arms,  and  were 
going  to  destroy  all  comers.  They  had  had  a  battle  with  a 
troop  of  Turkish  cavalry  and  defeated  them ;  several  men 
killed.  They  had  shut  up  the  inhabitants  of  a  village  and  a 


588  DISMAL     RUMORS. 

Turkish  garrison  in  an  old  fort  near  Jericho,  and  were  be 
sieging  them.  They  had  marched  upon  a  camp  of  our  excur 
sionists  by  the  Jordan,  and  the  pilgrims  only  saved  their  lives 
by  stealing  away  and  flying  to  Jerusalem  under  whip  and  spur 
in  the  darkness  of  the  night.  Another  of  our  parties  had  been 
fired  on  from  an  ambush  and  then  attacked  in  the  open  day. 
Shots  were  fired  on  both  sides.  Fortunately  there  was  no 
bloodshed.  We  spoke  with  the  very  pilgrim  who  had  fired 
one  of  the  shots,  and  learned  from  his  own  lips  how,  in  this 
imminent  deadly  peril,  only  the  cool  courage  of  the  pilgrims, 
their  strength  of  numbers  and  imposing  display  of  war  mate 
rial,  had  saved  them  from  utter  destruction.  It  was  reported 
that  the  Consul  had  requested  that  no  more  of  our  pilgrims 
should  go  to  the  Jordan  while  this  state  of  things  lasted ;  and 
further,  that  he  was  unwilling  that  any  more  should  go,  at  least 
without  an  unusually  strong  military  guard.  Here  was 
trouble.  But  with  the  horses  at  the  door  and  every  body 
aware  of  what  they  were  there  for,  what  would  you  have  done  ? 
Acknowledged  that  you  were  afraid,  and  backed  shamefully 
out  ?  Hardly.  It  would  not  be  human  nature,  where  there 
were  so  many  women.  You  would  have  done  as  we  did  :  said 
you  were  not  afraid  of  a  million  Bedouins — and  made  your 
will  and  proposed  quietly  to  yourself  to  take  up  an  unostenta 
tious  position  in  the  rear  of  the  procession. 

I  think  we  must  all  have  determined  upon  the  same  line  of 
tactics,  for  it  did  seem  as  if  we  never  would  get  to  Jericho.  I 
had  a  notoriously  slow  horse,  but  somehow  I  could  not  keep 
him  in  the  rear,  to  save  my  neck.  He  was  forever  turning  up 
in  the  lead.  In  such  cases  I  trembled  a  little,  and  got  down 
to  fix  my  saddle.  But  it  was  not  of  any  use.  The  others  all 
got  down  to  fix  their  saddles,  too.  I  never  saw  such  a  time 
with  saddles.  It  was  the  first  time  any  of  them  had  got  out 
of  order  in  three  weeks,  and  now  they  had  all  broken  down  at 
once.  I  tried  walking,  for  exercise — I  had  not  had  enough  in 
Jerusalem  searching  for  holy  places.  But  it  was  a  failure. 
The  whole  mob  were  suffering  for  exercise,  and  it  was  not  fifteen 


LAZARUS. 


589 


minutes  till  they  were  all  on  foot  and  I  had  the  lead  again.    It 
was  very  discouraging. 


AN   EPIDEMIC. 


This  was  all  after  we  got  beyond  Bethany.  "We  stopped  at 
the  village  of  Bethany,  an  hour  out  from  Jerusalem.  They 
showed  us  the  tomb  of  Lazarus.  I  had  rather  live  in  it  than 
in  any  house  in  the  town.  And  they  showed  us  also  a  large 
"  Fountain  of  Lazarus,"  and  in  the  centre  of  the  village  the 
ancient  dwelling  of  Lazarus.  Lazarus  appears  to  have  been  a 
man  of  property.  The  legends  of  the  Sunday  Schools  do  him 
great  injustice;  they  give  one  the  impression  that  he  was  poor. 
It  is  because  they  get  him  confused  with  that  Lazarus  who  had 
no  merit  but  his  virtue,  and  virtue  never  has  been  as  respect 
able  as  money.  The  house  of  Lazarus  is  a  three-story  edifice, 
of  stone  masonry,  but  the  accumulated  rubbish  of  ages  has 
buried  all  of  it  but  the  upper  story.  We  took  candles  and  de 
scended  to  the  dismal  cell-like  chambers  where  Jesus  sat  at 
meat  with  Martha  and  Mary,  and  conversed  with  them  about 
their  brother.  We  could  not  but  look  upon  these  old  dingy 
apartments  with  a  more  than  common  interest. 


590 


BEDOUINS. 


We  had  had  a  glimpse,  from  a  mountain  top,  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  lying  like  a  blue  shield  in  the  plain  of  the  Jordan,  and 
now  we  were  marching  down  a  close,  naming,  rugged,  desolate 
defile,  where  no  living  creature  could  enjoy  life,  except,  per 
haps,  a  salamander.  It  was  such  a  dreary,  repulsive,  horrible 
solitude !  It  was  the  "  wilderness "  where  John  preached, 
with  camel's  hair  about  his  loins — raiment  enough — but  he 
never  could  have  got  his  locusts  and  wild  honey  here.  We 
were  moping  along  down  through  this  dreadful  place,  every 
man  in  the  rear.  Our  guards — two  gorgeous  young  Arab 
sheiks,  with  cargoes  of  swords,  guns,  pistols  and  daggers  on 
board — were  loafing  ahead. 
"  Bedouins !" 

Every  man  shrunk  up  and  disappeared  in  his  clothes  like  a 

mud-turtle.  My 
first  impulse  was 
to  dash  forward 
and  destroy  the 
Bedouins.  My 
second  was  to 
dash  to  the  rear 
to  see  if  there 
were  any  coming 
in  that  direction. 
I  acted  on  the 
latter  impulse. 
So  did  all  the 
others.  If  any 
Bedouins  had 
approached  us, 
then,  from  that 
point  of  the 
compass,  they 
would  have  paid 
dearly  for  their 
rashness.  We 
all  remarked 
that,  afterwards.  There  would  have  been  scenes  of  riot  and 


CHARGE   ON   BEDOUINS. 


BEDOUINS.  591 

bloodshed  there  that  no  pen  could  describe.  I  know  that,  be 
cause  each  man  told  what  he  would  have  done,  individually  ; 
and  such  a  medley  of  strange  and  unheard-of  inventions  of 
cruelty  you  could  not  conceive  of.  One  man  said  he  had 
calmly  made  up  his  mind  to  perish  where  he  stood,  if  need  be, 
but  never  yield  an  inch  ;  he  was  going  to  wait,  with  deadly 
patience,  till  he  could  count  the  stripes  upon  the  first  Be 
douin's  jacket,  and  then  count  them  and  let  him  have  it.  An 
other  was  going  to  sit  still  till  the  first  lance  reached  within  an 
inch  of  his  breast,  and  then  dodge  it  and  seize  it.  I  forbear 
to  tell  what  he  wras  going  to  do  to  that  Bedouin  that  owned  it. 
It  makes  my  blood  run  cold  to  think  of  it.  Another  was 
going  to  scalp  such  Bedouins  as  fell  to  his  share,  and  take  his 
bald-headed  sons  of  the  desert  home  with  him  alive  for 
trophies.  But  the  wild-eyed  pilgrim  rhapsodist  was  silent. 
His  orbs  gleamed  with  a  deadly  light,  but  his  lips  moved  not. 
Anxiety  grew,  and  he  was  questioned.  If  he  had  got  a  Be 
douin,  what  would  he  have  done  with  him — shot  him  ?  He 
smiled  a  smile  of  grim  contempt  and  shook  his  head.  Would 
he  have  stabbed  him  ?  Another  shake.  Would  he  have  quar 
tered  him — flayed  him  ?  More  shakes.  Oh  !  horror,  what 
would  he  have  done  ? 

"  Eat  him  !"* 

Such  was  the  awful  sentence  that  thundered  from  his  lips. 
"What  wras  grammar  to  a  desperado  like  that  ?  I  was  glad  in 
my  heart  that  I  had  been  spared  these  scenes  of  malignant 
carnage.  No  Bedouins  attacked  our  terrible  rear.  And  none 
attacked  the  front.  The  new-comers  were  only  a  reinforce 
ment  of  cadaverous  Arabs,  in  shirts  and  bare  legs,  sent  far 
ahead  of  ITS  to  brandish  rusty  guns,  and  shout  and  brag,  and 
carry  on  like  lunatics,  and  thus  scare  away  all  bands  of  ma 
rauding  Bedouins  that  might  lurk  about  our  path.  What  a 
shame  it  is  that  armed  white  Christians  must  travel  under 
guard  of  vermin  like  this  as  a  protection  against  the  prowling 
vagabonds  of  the  desert — those  sanguinary  outlaws  who  are 
always  going  to  do  something  desperate,  but  never  do  it.  I 
may  as  well  mention  here  that  on  our  whole  trip  we  saw  no 


592  THE     NIGHT     MARCH. 

Bedouins,  and  had  no  more  use  for  an  Arab  guard  than  we 
could  have  had  for  patent  leather  boots  and  white  kid  gloves. 
The  Bedouins  that  attacked  the  other  parties  of  pilgrims  so 
fiercely  were  provided  for  the  occasion  by  the  Arab  guards  of 
those  parties,  and  shipped  from  Jerusalem  for  temporary  ser 
vice  as  Bedouins.  They  met  together  in  full  view  of  the  pil 
grims,  after  the  battle,  and  took  lunch,  divided  the  bucksheesh 
extorted  in  the  season  of  danger,  and  then  accompanied  the 
cavalcade  home  to  the  city  !  The  nuisance  of  an  Arab  guard 
is  one  which  is  created  by  the  Sheiks  and  the  Bedouins  to 
gether,  for  mutual  profit,  it  is  said,  and  no  doubt  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  truth  in  it. 

We  visited  the  fountain  the  prophet  Elisha  sweetened  (it  is 
sweet  yet ;)  where  he  remained  some  time  and  was  fed  by  the 
ravens. 

Ancient  Jericho  is  not  very  picturesque  as  a  ruin.  When 
Joshua  marched  around  it  seven  times,  some  three  thousand 
years  ago,  and  blew  it  down  with  his  trumpet,  he  did  the  work 
so  well  and  so  completely  that  he  hardly  left  enough  of  the 
city  to  cast  a  shadow.  The  curse  pronounced  against  the  re 
building  of  it,  has  never  been  removed.  One  King,  holding 
the  curse  in  light  estimation,  made  the  attempt,  but  was 
stricken  sorely  for  his  presumption.  Its  site  will  always 
remain  unoccupied  ;  and  yet  it  is  one  of  the  very  best  locations 
for  a  town  we  have  seen  in  all  Palestine. 

At  two  in  the  morning  they  routed  us  out  of  bed — another 
piece  of  unwarranted  cruelty — another  stupid  effort  of  our 
dragoman  to  get  ahead  of  a  rival.  It  was  not  two  hours  to  the 
Jordan.  However,  we  were  dressed  and  under  way  before  any 
one  thought  of  looking  to  see  what  time  it  was,  and  so  we 
drowsed  on  through  the  chill  night  air  and  dreamed  of  camp 
fires,  warm  beds,  and  other  comfortable  things. 

There  was  no  conversation.  People  do  not  talk  when  they 
are  cold,  and  wretched,  and  sleepy.  We  nodded  in  the  saddle, 
at  times,  and  woke  up  with  a  start  to  find  that  the  procession 
had  disappeared  in  the  glooin.  Then  there  was  energy  and 
attention  to  business  until  its  dusky  outlines  came  in  sight 


"ON  JORDAN'S   STORMY  BANKS."  593 

again.  Occasionally  the  order  was  passed  in  a  low  voice  down 
the  line :  "  Close  up — close  up  !  Bedouins  lurk  here,  every 
where !"  "What  an  exquisite  shudder  it  sent  shivering  along 
one's  spine ! 

We  reached  the  famous  river  before  four  o'clock,  and  the 
night  was  so  black  that  we  could  have  ridden  into  it  without 
seeing  it.  Some  of  us  were  in  an  unhappy  frame  of  mind. 
We  waited  and  waited  for  daylight,  but  it  did  not  come.  Fi 
nally  we  went  away  in  the  dark  and  slept  an  hour  on  the 
ground,  in  the  bushes,  and  caught  cold.  It  was  a  costly  nap, 
on  that  account,  but  otherwise  it  was  a  paying  investment 
because  it  brought  unconsciousness  of  the  dreary  minutes  and 
put  us  in  a  somewhat  fitter  mood  for  a  first  glimpse  of  the 
sacred  river. 

With  the  first  suspicion  of  dawn,  every  pilgrim  took  off  his 
clothes  and  waded  into  the  dark  torrent,  singing : 

"  On  Jordan's  stormy  banks  I  stand, 

And  cast  a  wistful  eye 
To  Canaan's  fair  and  happy  land, 
Where  my  possessions  lie." 

But  they  did  not  sing  long.  The  water  was  so  fearfully  cold 
that  they  were  obliged  to  stop  singing  and  scamper  out  again. 
Then  they  stood  on  the  bank  shivering,  and  so  chagrined  and 
so  grieved,  that  they  merited  honest  compassion.  Because  an 
other  dream,  another  cherished  hope,  had  failed.  They  had 
promised  themselves  all  along  that  they  would  cross  the  Jordan 
where  the  Israelites  crossed  it  when  they  entered  Canaan  from 
their  long  pilgrimage  in  the  desert.  They  would  cross  where 
the  twelve  stones  were  placed  in  memory  of  that  great  event. 
While  they  did  it  they  would  picture  to  themselves  that  vast 
army  of  pilgrims  marching  through  the  cloven  waters,  bearing 
the  hallowed  ark  of  the  covenant  and  shouting  hosannahs,  and 
singing  songs  of  thanksgiving  and  praise.  Each  had  promised 
himself  that  he  would  be  the  first  to  cross.  They  were  at  the 
goal  of  their  hopes  at  last,  but  the  current  was  too  swift,  the 
water  was  too  cold  ! 

38 


594 


THE     DEAD     SEA. 


It  was  then  that  Jack  did  them  a  service.  With  that  engag 
ing  recklessness  of  consequences  which  is  natural  to  youth, 
and  so  proper  and  so  seemly,  as  well,  he  went  and  led  the  way 
across  the  Jordan,  and  all  was  happiness  again.  Every  indi 
vidual  waded  over,  then,  and  stood  upon  the  further  bank. 
The  water  was  not  quite  breast  deep,  any  where.  If  it  had 
been  more,  we  could  hardly  have  accomplished  the  feat,  for  the 
strong  current  would  have  swept  us  down  the  stream,  and  we 
would  have  been  exhausted  and  drowned  before  reaching  a 
place  where  we  could  make  a  landing.  The  main  object  com 
passed,  the  drooping,  miserable  party  sat  down  to  wait  for  the 
sun  again,  for  all  wanted  to  see  the  water  as  well  as  feel  it. 
But  it  was  too  cold  a  pastime.  Some  cans  were  filled  from  the 
holy  river,  some  canes  cut  from  its  banks,  and  then  we  mount 
ed  and  rode  reluctantly  away  to  keep  from  freezing  to  death. 
So  we  saw  the  Jordan  very  dimly.  The  thickets  of  bushes 
that  bordered  its  banks  threw  their  shadows  across  its  shallow, 
turbulent  waters  ("  stormy,"  the  hymn  makes  them,  which  is 
rather  a  complimentary  stretch  of  fancy,)  and  we  could  not 
judge  of  the  width  of  the  stream  by  the  eye.  We  knew  by 
our  wading  experience,  however,  that  many  streets  in  America 
are  double  as  wide  as  the  Jordan. 

Daylight  came,  soon   after  we  got  under  way,  and  in  the 

course  of  an  hour  or 
two  we  reached  the 


Dead  Sea.  Nothing 
grows  in  the  flat, 
burning  desert 
around  it  but  weeds 
and  the  Dead  Sea 
apple  the  poets  say 
is  beautiful  to  the 
eye,  but  crumbles  to 
ashes  and  dust  when 
you  break  it.  Such 
as  we  found  were  not 

handsome,  but  they  were  bitter  to  the  taste.     They  yielded  no 
dust.     It  was  because  they  were  not  ripe,  perhaps. 


THE    HEAD    SEA. 


THE     DEAD     SEA.  595 

The  desert  and  the  barren  hills  gleam  painfully  in  the  sun, 
around  the  Dead  Sea,  and  there  is  no  pleasant  thing  or  living 
creature  upon  it  or  about  its  borders  to  cheer  the  eye.  It  is  a 
scorching,  arid,  repulsive  solitude.  A  silence  broods  over  the 
scene  that  is  depressing  to  the  spirits.  It  makes  one  think  of 
funerals  and  death. 

The  Dead  Sea  is  small.  Its  waters  are  very  clear,  and  it 
has  a  pebbly  bottom  and  is  shallow  for  some  distance  out  from 
the  shores.  It  yields  quantities  of  asphaltum  ;  fragments  of  it 
lie  all  about  its  banks ;  this  stuff  gives  the  place  something  of 
an  unpleasant  smell. 

All  our  reading  had  taught  us  to  expect  that  the  first  plunge 
into  the  Dead  Sea  would  be  attended  with  distressing  results 
— our  bodies  would  feel  as  if  they  were  suddenly  pierced  by 
millions  of  red-hot  needles  ;  the  dreadful  smarting  would  con 
tinue  for  hours ;  we  might  even  look  to  be  blistered  from  head 
to  foot,  and  suffer  miserably  for  many  days.  We  were  disap 
pointed.  Our  eight  sprang  in  at  the  same  time  that  another 
party  of  pilgrims  did,  and  nobody  screamed  once.  None  of 
them  ever  did  complain  of  any  thing  more  than  a  slight  prick 
ing  sensation  in  places  where  their  skin  was  abraded,  and  then 
only  for  a  short  time.  My  face  smarted  for  a  couple  of  hours, 
but  it  was  partly  because  I  got  it  badly  sun-burned  while  I  was 
bathing,  and  staid  in  so  long  that  it  became  plastered  over 
with  salt. 

No,  the  water  did  not  blister  us ;  it  did  not  cover  us  with  a 
slimy  ooze  and  confer  upon  us  an  atrocious  fragrance ;  it  was 
not  very  slimy  ;  and  I  could  not  discover  that  we  smelt  really 
any  worse  than  we  have  always  smelt  since  we  have  been  in 
Palestine.  It  was  only  a  different  kind  of  smell,  but  not  con 
spicuous  on  that  account,  because  we  have  a  great  deal  of  va 
riety  in  that  respect.  We  didn't  smell,  there  on  the  Jordan, 
the  same  as  we  do  in  Jerusalem ;  and  we  don't  smell  in  Jeru 
salem  just  as  we  did  in  Nazareth,  or  Tiberias,  or  Cesarea  Phi- 
lippi,  or  any  of  those  other  ruinous  ancient  towns  in  Galilee. 
No,  we  change  all  the  time,  and  generally  for  the  worse.  We 
do  our  own  washing. 


596  THE     DEAD     SEA. 

It  was  a  funny  bath.  We  could  not  sink.  One  could  stretch 
himself  at  full  length  on  his  back,  with  his  arms  on  his  breast, 
and  all  of  his  body  above  a  line  drawn  from  the  corner  of  his 
jaw  past  the  middle  of  his  side,  the  middle  of  his  leg  and 
through  his  ancle  bone,  would  remain  out  of  water.  He  could 
lift  his  head  clear  out,  if  he  chose.  No  position  can  be  retain 
ed  long;  you  lose  your  balance  and  whirl  over,  first  on 
your  back  and  then  on  your  face,  and  so  on.  You  can  lie  com 
fortably,  on  your  back,  with  your  head  out,  and  your  legs  out 
from  your  knees  down,  by  steadying  yourself  with  your  hands. 
You  can  sit,  with  your  knees  drawn  up  to  your  chin  and  your 
arms  clasped  around  them,  but  you  are  bound  to  turn  over 
presently,  because  you  are  top-heavy  in  that  position.  You 
can  stand  up  straight  in  water  that  is  over  your  head,  and  from 
the  middle  of  your  breast  upward  you  will  not  be  wet.  But 
you  can  not  remain  so.  The  water  will  soon  float  your  feet  to 
the  surface.  You  can  not  swim  on  your  back  and  make  any 
progress  of  any  consequence,  because  your  feet  stick  away 
above  the  surface,  and  there  is  nothing  to  propel  yourself  with 
but  your  heels.  If  you  swim  on  your  face,  you  kick  up  the 
water  like  a  stern-wheel  boat.  You  make  no  headway.  A 
horse  is  so  top-heavy  that  he  can  neither  swim  nor  stand  up  in 
the  Dead  Sea.  He  turns  over  on  his  side  at  once.  Some  of 
us  bathed  for  more  than  an  hour,  and  then  came  out  coated 
with  salt  till  we  shone  like  icicles.  We  scrubbed  it  off  with  a 
coarse  towel  and  rode  off  with  a  splendid  brand-new  smell, 
though  it  was  one  which  was  not  any  more  disagreeable  than 
those  we  have  been  for  several  weeks  enjoying.  It  was  the 
variegated  villainy  and  novelty  of  it  that  charmed  us.  Salt 
crystals  glitter  in  the  sun  about  the  shores  of  the  lake.  In 
places  they  coat  the  ground  like  a  brilliant  crust  of  ice. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  somehow  got  the  impression  that  the 
river  Jordan  was  four  thousand  miles  long  and  thirty-five  miles 
wide.  It  is  only  ninety  miles  long,  and  so  crooked  that  a  man 
does  not  know  which  side  of  it  he  is  on  half  the  time.  In 
going  ninety  miles  it  does  not  get  over  more  than  fifty  miles 
of  ground.  It  is  not  any  wider  than  Broadway  in  New  York. 


THE     HERMITS     OF     MARS     SABA.  597 

There  is  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and  this  Dead  Sea — neither  of  them 
twenty  miles  long  or  thirteen  wide.  And  yet  when  I  was  in 
Sunday  School  I  thought  they  were  sixty  thousand  miles  in 
diameter. 

Travel  and  experience  mar  the  grandest  pictures  and  rob  us 
of  the  most  cherished  traditions  of  our  boyhood.  Well,  let 
them  go.  I  have  already  seen  the  Empire  of  King  Solomon 
diminish  to  the  size  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania ;  I  suppose 
I  can  bear  the  reduction  of  the  seas  and  the  river. 

We  looked  every  where,  as  we  passed  along,  but  never  saw 
grain  or  crystal  of  Lot's  wife.  It  was  a  great  disappointment. 
For  many  and  many  a  year  we  had  known  her  sad  story,  and 
taken  that  interest  in  her  which  misfortune  always  inspires. 
But  she  was  gone.  Her  picturesque  form  no  longer  looms 
above  the  desert  of  the  Dead  Sea  to  remind  the  tourist  of  the 
doom  that  fell  upon  the  lost  cities. 

I  can  not  describe  the  hideous  afternoon's  ride  from  the 
Dead  Sea  to  Mars  Saba.  It  oppresses  me  yet,  to  think  of  it. 
The  sun  so  pelted  us  that  the  tears  ran  down  our  cheeks  once 
or  twice.  The  ghastly,  treeless,  grassless,  breathless  canons 
smothered  us  as  if  we  had  been  in  an  oven.  The  sun  had 
positive  weight  to  it,  I  think.  Not  a  man  could  sit  erect  under 
it.  All  drooped  low  in  the  saddles.  John  preached  in  this 
"  Wilderness  !"  It  must  have  been  exhausting  work.  What 
a  very  heaven  the  massy  towers  and  ramparts  of  vast  Mars 
Saba  looked  to  us  when  we  caught  a  first  glimpse  of  them  ! 

We  staid  at  this  great  convent  all  night,  guests  of  the  hos 
pitable  priests.  Mars  Saba,  perched  upon  a  crag,  a  human 
nest  stuck  high  up  against  a  perpendicular  mountain  wall,  is 
a  world  of  grand  masonry  that  rises,  terrace  upon  terrace  away 
above  your  head,  like  the  terraced  and  retreating  colonnades 
one  sees  in  fanciful  pictures  of  Belshazzar's  Feast  and  the  pal 
aces  of  the  ancient  Pharaohs.  No  other  human  dwelling  is 
near.  It  was  founded  many  ages  ago  by  a  holy  recluse  who 
lived  at  first  in  a  cave  in  the  rock — a  cave  which  is  inclosed  in 
the  convent  walls,  now,  and  was  reverently  shown  to  us  by  the 
priests.  This  recluse,  by  his  rigorous  torturing  of  his  flesh, 


598  GOOD     ST.     SABA. 

liis  diet  of  bread  and  water,  his  utter  withdrawal  from  all  so 
ciety  and  from  the  vanities  of  the  world,  and  his  constant 
prayer  and  saintly  contemplation  of  a  skull,  inspired  an  emu 
lation  that  brought  about  him  many  disciples.  The  precipice 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  canon  is  well  perforated  with  the 
small  holes  they  dug  in  the  rock  to  live  in.  The  present  occu 
pants  of  Mars  Saba,  about  seventy  in  number,  are  all  hermits. 
They  wear  a  coarse  robe,  an  iigly,  brimless  stove-pipe  of  a  hat, 
and  go  without  shoes.  They  eat  nothing  whatever  but  bread 
and  salt ;  they  drink  nothing  but  water.  As  long  as  they  live 
they  can  never  go  outside  the  wralls,  or  look  upon  a  w^oman — 
for  no  woman  is  permitted  to  enter  Mars  Saba,  upon  any  pre 
text  whatsoever. 

Some  of  those  men  have  been  shut  up  there  for  thirty  years. 
In  all  that  dreary  time  they  have  not  heard  the  laughter  of  a 
child  or  the  blessed  voice  of  a  woman ;  they  have  seen  no 
human  tears,  no  human  smiles  ;  they  have  known  no  human 
joys,  no  wholesome  human  sorrows.  In  their  hearts  are  no 
memories  of  the  past,  in  their  brains  no  dreams  of  the  future. 
All  that  is  lovable,  beautiful,  worthy,  they  have  put  far  away 
from  them ;  against  all  things  that  are  pleasant  to  look  upon, 
and  all  sounds  that  are  music  to  the  ear,  they  have  barred 
their  massive  doors  and  reared  their  relentless  walls  of  stone 
forever.  They  have  banished  the  tender  grace  of  life  and  left 
only  the  sapped  and  skinny  mockery.  Their  lips  are  lips  that 
never  kiss  and  never  sing ;  their  hearts  are  hearts  that  never 
hate  and  never  love  ;  their  breasts  are  breasts  that  never  swell 
with  the  sentiment,  "  I  have  a  country  and  a  flag."  They  are 
dead  men  who  walk. 

I  set  down  these  first  thoughts  because  they  are  natural— 
not  because  they  are  just  or  because  it  is  right  to  set  them 
down.  It  is  easy  for  book-makers  to  say  "  I  thought  so  and  so 
as  I  looked  upon  such  and  such  a  scene" — when  the  truth 
is,  they  thought  all  those  fine  things  afterwards.  One's  first 
thought  is  not  likely  to  be  strictly  accurate,  yet  it  is  no  crime 
to  think  it  and  none  to  write  it  down,  subject  to  modification 
by  later  experience.  These  hermits  are  dead  men,  in  several 


UNSELFISH     CATHOLIC     BENEVOLENCE.          599 

respects,  but  not  in  all ;  and  it  is  not  proper,  that,  thinking  ill 
of  them  at  first,  I  should  go  on  doing  so,  or,  speaking  ill  of 
them  I  should  reiterate  the  words  and  stick  to  them.  No,  they 
treated  us  too  kindly  for  that.  There  is  something  human 
about  them  somewhere.  They  knew  we  were  foreigners  and 
Protestants,  and  not  likely  to  feel  admiration  or  much  friend 
liness  toward  them.  But  their  large  charity  was  above  consid 
ering  such  things.  They  simply  saw  in  us  men  who  were 
hungry,  and  thirsty,  and  tired,  and  that  was  sufficient.  They 
opened  their  doors  and  gave  us  welcome.  They  asked  no  ques 
tions,  and  they  made  no  self-righteous  display  of  their  hospi- 
pitality.  They  fished  for  no  compliments.  They  moved 
quietly  about,  setting  the  table  for  us,  making  the  beds,  and 
bringing  water  to  wash  in,  and  paid  no  heed  when  we  said  it 
was  wrong  for  them  to  do  that  when  we  had  men  whose  busi 
ness  it  was  to  perform  such  offices.  We  fared  most  comfort 
ably,  and  sat  late  at  dinner.  We  walked  all  over  the  building 
with  the  hermits  afterward,  and  then  sat  on  the  lofty  battle 
ments  and  smoked  while  we  enjoyed  the  cool  air,  the  wild 
scenery  and  the  sunset.  One  or  two  chose  cosy  bed-rooms  to 
sleep  in,  but  the  nomadic  instinct  prompted  the  rest  to  sleep 
on  the  broad  divan  that  extended  around  the  great  hall,  be 
cause  it  seemed  like  sleeping  out  of  doors,  and  so  was  more 
cheery  and  inviting.  It  was  a  royal  rest  we  had. 

When  we  got  up  to  breakfast  in  the  morning,  we  were  new 
men.  For  all  this  hospitality  no  strict  charge  was  made.  We 
could  give  something  if  we  chose ;  we  need  give  nothing,  if 
we  were  poor  or  if  we  were  stingy.  The  pauper  and  the  miser 
are  as  free  as  any  in  the  Catholic  Convents  of  Palestine.  I 
have  been  educated  to  enmity  toward  every  thing  that  is  Cath 
olic,  and  sometimes,  in  consequence  of  this,  I  find  it  much 
easier  to  discover  Catholic  faults  than  Catholic  merits.  But 
there  is  one  thing  I  feel  no  disposition  to  overlook,  and  no  dis 
position  to  forget :  and  that  is,  the  honest  gratitude  I  and  all 
pilgrims  owe,  to  the  Convent  Fathers  in  Palestine.  Their 
doors  are  always  open,  and  there  is  always  a  welcome  for  any 
worthy  man  who  comes,  whether  he  comes  in  rags  or  clad  in 


600  PLAIN     OF     THE     SHEPHERDS. 

purple.  The  Catholic  Convents  are  a  priceless  blessing  to  the 
poor.  A  pilgrim  without  money,  whether  he  be  a  Protestant 
or  a  Catholic,  can  travel  the  length  and  breadth  of  Palestine, 
and  in  the  midst  of  her  desert  wastes  find  wholesome  food  and 
a  clean  bed  every  night,  in  these  buildings.  Pilgrims  in  better 
circumstances  are  often  stricken  down  by  the  sun  and  the 
fevers  of  the  country,  and  then  their  saving  refuge  is  the  Con 
vent.  Without  these  hospitable  retreats,  travel  in  Palestine 
would  be  a  pleasure  wrhich  none  but  the  strongest  men  could 
dare  to  undertake.  Our  party,  pilgrims  and  all,  will  always 
be  ready  and  always  willing,  to  touch  glasses  and  drink  health, 
prosperity  and  long  life  to  the  Convent  Fathers  of  Palestine. 

So,  rested  and  refreshed,  we  fell  into  line  and  filed  away 
over  the  barren  mountains  of  Judea,  and  along  rocky  ridges 
and  through  sterile  gorges,  where  eternal  silence  and  solitude 
reigned.  Even  the  scattering  groups  of  armed  shepherds  we 
met  the  afternoon  before,  tending  their  flocks  of  lorg-haired 
goats,  were  wanting  here.  We  saw  but  two  living  creatures. 
They  were  gazelles,  of  "  soft-eyed  "  notoriety.  They  looked 
like  very  young  kids,  but  they  annihilated  distance  like  an  ex 
press  train.  I  have  not  seen  animals  that  moved  faster,  unless 
I  might  say  it  of  the  antelopes  of  our  own  great  plains. 

At  nine  or  ten  in  the  morning  we  reached  the  Plain  of  the 
Shepherds,  and  stood  in  a  walled  garden  of  olives  where  the 
shepherds  were  watching  their  flocks  by  night,  eighteen  centu 
ries  ago,  wThen  the  multitude  of  angels  brought  them  the 
tidings  that  the  Saviour  was  born.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  away 
was  Bethlehem  of  Judea,  and  the  pilgrims  took  some  of  the 
stone  wall  and  hurried  on. 

The  Plain  of  the  Shepherds  is  a  desert,  paved  with  loose 
stones,  void  of  vegetation,  glaring  in  the  fierce  sun.  Only  the 
music  of  the  angels  it  knew  once  could  charm  its  shrubs  and 
flowrers  to  life  again  and  restore  its  vanished  beauty.  No  less 
potent  enchantment  could  avail  to  work  this  miracle. 

Tn  the  huge  Church  of  the  Nativity,  in  Bethlehem,  built  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago  by  the  inveterate  St.  Helena,  they  took  us 
below  ground,  and  into  a  grotto  cut  in  the  living  rock.  This  was 


THE     FAMOUS     UMILK    GROTTO."  601 

the  "  manger  "  where  Christ  was  born.  A  silver  star  set  in  the 
floor  bears  a  Latin  inscription  to  that  effect.  It  is  polished 
with  the  kisses  of  many  generations  of  worshiping  pilgrims. 
The  grotto  was  tricked  out  in  the  usual  tasteless  style  observ 
able  in  all  the  holy  places  of  Palestine.  As  in  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre,  envy  and  uncharitableness  were  apparent 
here.  The  priests  and  the  members  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
Churches  can  not  come  by  the  same  corridor  to  kneel  in  the 
sacred  birthplace  of  the  Redeemer,  but  are  compelled  to  ap 
proach  and  retire  by  different  avenues,  lest  they  quarrel  and 
fight  on  this  holiest  ground  on  earth. 

I  have  no  "  meditations,"  suggested  by  this  spot  where  the 
very  first  "  Merry  Christmas  !"  was  uttered  in  all  the  world, 
and  from  whence  the  friend  of  my  childhood,  Santa  Claus,  de 
parted  on  his  first  journey,  to  gladden  and  continue  to  gladden 
roaring  firesides  on  wintry  mornings  in  many  a  distant  land 
forever  and  forever.  I  touch,  with  reverent  finger,  the  actual 
spot  where  the  infant  Jesus  lay,  but  I  think — nothing. 

You  can  not  think  in  this  place  any  more  than  you  can  in 
any  other  in  Palestine  that  would  be  likely  to  inspire  reflection. 
Beggars,  cripples  and  monks  compass  you  about,  and  make 
you  think  only  of  bucksheesh  when  you  would  rather  think  of 
something  more  in  keeping  with  the  character  of  the  spot. 

I  was  glad  to  get  away,  and  glad  when  we  had  walked 
through  the  grottoes  where  Eusebius  wrote,  and  Jerome  fasted, 
and  Joseph  prepared  for  the  flight  into  Egypt,  and  the  dozen 
other  distinguished  git>ttoes,  and  knew  we  were  done.  The 
Church  of  the  Nativity  is  almost  as  well  packed  with  exceed 
ing  holy  places  as  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  itself. 
They  even  have  in  it  a  grotto  wherein  twenty  thousand  chil 
dren  were  slaughtered  by  Herod  when  he  was  seeking  the  life 
of  the  infant  Saviour. 

We  went  to  the  Milk  Grotto,  of  course — a  cavern  where 
Mary  hid  herself  for  a  while  before  the  flight  into  Egypt.  Its 
walls  were  black  before  she  entered,  but  in  suckling  the  Child, 
a  drop  of  her  milk  fell  upon  the  floor  and  instantly  changed 
the  darkness  of  the  walls  to  its  own  snowy  hue.  We  took 


602  EXHAUSTED. 

many  little  fragments  of  stone  from  here,  because  it  is  well 
known  in  all  the  East  that  a  barren  woman  hath  need  only  to 
touch  her  lips  to  one  of  these  and  her  failing  will  depart  from 
her.  AVe  took  many  specimens,  to  the  end  that  we  might  con 
fer  happiness  upon  certain  households  that  we  wot  of. 

We  got  away  from  Bethlehem  and  its  troops  of  beggars  and 
relic-peddlers  in  the  afternoon,  and  after  spending  some  little 
time  at  Rachel's  tomb,  hurried  to  Jerusalem  as  fast  as  possible. 
I  never  was  so  glad  to  get  home  again  before.  I  never  have 
enjoyed  rest  as  I  have  enjoyed  it  during  these  last  few  hours. 
The  journey  to  the  Dead  Sea,  the  Jordan  and  Bethlehem  was 
short,  but  it  was  an  exhausting  one.  Such  roasting  heat,  such 
oppressive  solitude,  and  such  dismal  desolation  can  not  surely 
exist  elsewhere  on  earth.  And  such  fatigue  ! 

The  commonest  sagacity  warns  me  that  I  ought  to  tell  the 
customary  pleasant  lie,  and  say  I  tore  myself  reluctantly  away 
from  every  noted  place  in  Palestine.  Every  body  tells  that, 
but  with  as  little  ostentation  as  I  may,  I  doubt  the  word  of 
every  he  who  tells  it.  I  could  take  a  dreadful  oath  that  I  have 
never  heard  any  one  of  our  forty  pilgrims  say  any  thing  of  the 
sort,  and  they  are  as  worthy  and  as  sincerely  devout  as  any 
that  come  here.  They  will  say  it  when  they  get  home,  fast 
enough,  but  why  should  they  not  ?  They  do  not  wish  to  array 
themselves  against  all  the  Lamartines  and  Grimeses  in  the 
world.  It  does  not  stand  to  reason  that  men  are  reluctant  to 
leave  places  where  the  very  life  is  almost  badgered  out  of  them 
by  importunate  swarms  of  beggars  and  peddlers  who  hang  in 
strings  to  one's  sleeves  and  coat-tails  and  shriek  and  shout  in 
his  ears  and  horrify  his  vision  with  the  ghastly  sores  and  mal 
formations  they  exhibit.  One  is  glad  to  get  away.  I  have 
heard  shameless  people  say  they  were  glad  to  get  away  from 
Ladies'  Festivals  where  they  were  importuned  to  buy  by  bevies 
of  lovely  young  ladies.  Transform  those  houris  into  dusky 
hags  and  ragged  savages,  and  replace  their  rounded  forms  with 
shrunken  and  knotted  distortions,  their  soft  hands  with  scarred 
and  hideous  deformities,  and  the  persuasive  music  of  their 
voices  with  the  discordant  din  of  a  hated  language,  and  then 


AFTER     THOUGHTS.  603 

see  how  much  lingering  reluctance  to  leave  could  be  mustered. 
No,  it  is  the  neat  thing  to  say  you  were  reluctant  and  then 
append  the  profound  thoughts  that  "  struggled  for  utterance," 
in  your  brain ;  but  it  is  the  true  thing  to  say  you  were  not 
reluctant,  and  found  it  impossible  to  think  at  all — though  in 
good  sooth  it  is  not  respectable  to  say  it,  and  not  poetical, 
either. 

We  do  not  think,  in  the  holy  places ;  we  think  in  bed,  after 
wards,  when  the  glare,  and  the  noise,  and  the  confusion  are 
gone,  and  in  fancy  wre  revisit  alone,  the  solemn  monuments  of 
the  past,  and  summon  the  phantom  pageants  of  an  age  that 
has  passed  away. 


CHAPTEE    LYI. 

~\TTE  visited  all  the  holy  places  about  Jerusalem  which  we 

*  »  had  left  unvisited  when  we  journeyed  to  the  Jordan, 
and  then,  about  three  o'clock  one  afternoon,  we  fell  into  pro 
cession  and  marched  out  at  the  stately  Damascus  gate,  and  the 
walls  of  Jerusalem  shut  us  out  forever.  We  paused  on  the 
summit  of  a  distant  hill  and  took  a  final  look  and  made  a  final 
farewell  to  the  venerable  city  which  had  been  such  a  good 
home  to  us. 

For  about  four  hours  we  traveled  down  hill  constantly. 
We  followed  a  narrow  bridle-path  which  traversed  the  beds  of 
the  mountain  gorges,  and  when  we  could  we  got  out  of  the 
way  of  the  long  trains  of  laden  camels  and  asses,  and  when  we 
could  not  wre  suffered  the  misery  of  being  mashed  up  against 
perpendicular  walls  of  rock  and  having  our  legs  bruised  by  the 
passing  freight.  Jack  was  caught  two  or  three  times,  and  Dan 
and  Moult  as  often.  One  horse  had  a  heavy  fall  on  the  slip 
pery  rocks,  and  the  others  had  narrow  escapes.  However, 
this  was  as  good  a  road  as  we  had  found  in  Palestine,  and  pos 
sibly  even  the  best,  and  so  there  was  not  much  grumbling. 

Sometimes,  in  the  glens,  we  came  upon  luxuriant  orchards 
of  figs,  apricots,  pomegranates,  and  such  things,  but  oftener 
the  scenery  was  rugged,  mountainous,  verdureless  and  forbid 
ding.  Here  and  there,  towers  were  perched  high  up  on  accliv 
ities  which  seemed  almost  inaccessible.  This  fashion  is  as 
old  as  Palestine  itself  and  was  adopted  in  ancient  times  for  se 
curity  against  enemies. 

We  crossed  the  brook  which  furnished  David  the  stone  that 


i 

THE     PILGHIMAGE     ENDED.  605 

killed  Goliah,  and  no  doubt  we  looked  upon  the  very  ground 
whereon  that  noted  battle  was  fought.  We  passed  by  a 
picturesque  old  gothic  ruin  whose  stone  pavements  had  rung 
to  the  armed  heels  of  many  a  valorous  Crusader,  and  we  rode 
through  a  piece  of  country  which  we  were  told  once  knew 
Samson  as  a  citizen. 

We  staid  all  night  with  the  good  monks  at  the  convent 
of  Ramleh,  and  in  the  morning  got  up  and  galloped  the  horses 
a  good  part  of  the  distance  from  there  to  Jaffa,  or  Joppa,  for 
the  plain  was  as  level  as  a  floor  and  free  from  stones,  and 
besides  this  was  our  last  march  in  Holy  Land.  These  two 
or  three  hours  finished,  we  and  the  tired  horses  could  have  rest 
and  sleep  as  long  as  we  wanted  it.  This  was  the  plain  of 
which  Joshua  spoke  when  he  said,  "  Sun,  stand  thou  still  on 
Gibeon,  and  thou  moon  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon."  As  we  drew 
near  to  Jaffa,  the  boys  spurred  up  the  horses  and  indulged  in 
the  excitement  of  an  actual  race — an  experience  we  had  hardly 
had  since  we  raced  on  donkeys  in  the  Azores  islands. 

We  came  finally  to  the  noble  grove  of  orange-trees  in  which 
the  Oriental  city  of  Jaffa  lies  buried ;  we  passed  through  the 
walls,  and  rode  again  down  narrow  streets  and  among  swarms 
of  animated  rags,  and  saw  other  sights  and  had  other  experi 
ences  we  had  long  been  familiar  with.  We  dismounted,  for 
the  last  time,  and  out  in  the  offing,  riding  at  anchor,  we  saw 
the  ship !  I  put  an  exclamation  point  there  because  we  felt 
one  when  we  saw  the  vessel.  The  long  pilgrimage  was  ended, 
and  somehow  we  seemed  to  feel  glad  of  it. 

[For  description  of  Jaffa,  see  Universal  Gazetteer.]  Simon 
the  Tanner  formerly  lived  here.  We  went  to  his  house.  All 
the  pilgrims  visit  Simon  the  Tanner's  house.  Peter  saw  the 
vision  of  the  beasts  let  down  in  a  sheet  when  he  lay  upon  the 
roof  of  Simon  the  Tanner's  house.  It  was  from  Jaffa  that 
Jonah  sailed  when  he  was  told  to  go  and  prophesy  against 
Nineveh,  and  no  doubt  it  was  not  far  from  the  town  that  the 
whale  threw  him  up  when  he  discovered  that  he  had  no  ticket. 
Jonah  was  disobedient,  and  of  a  fault-finding,  complaining  dis 
position,  and  deserves  to  be  lightly  spoken  of,  almost.  The 


606  INFORMATION    ABOUT    JAFFA. 

timbers  used  in  the  construction  of  Solomon's  temple  were 
floated  to  Jaffa  in  rafts,  and  the  narrow  opening  in  the  reef 
through  which  they  passed  to  the  shore  is  not  an  inch  wider  or 
a  shade  less  dangerous  to  navigate  than  it  was  then.  Such  is 
the  sleepy  nature  of  the  population  Palestine's  only  good  sea 
port  has  now  and  always  had.  Jaffa  has  a  history  and  a  stir 
ring  one.  It  will  not  be  discovered  any  where  in  this  book.  If 
the  reader  will  call  at  the  circulating  library  and  mention  my 
name,  he  will  be  furnished  with  books  which  will  afford  him 
the  fullest  information  concerning  Jaffa. 

So  ends  the  pilgrimage.  We  ought  to  be  glad  that  we  did 
not  make  it  for  the  purpose  of  feasting  our  eyes  upon  fascina 
ting  aspects  of  nature,  for  we  should  have  been  disappointed — 
at  least  at  this  season  of  the  year.  A  writer  in  "  Life  in  the 
Holy  Land  "  observes  : 

"  Monotonous  and  uninviting  as  much  of  the  Holy  Land  will  appear  to  persons 
accustomed  to  the  almost  constant  verdure  of  flowers,  ample  streams  and  varied  sur 
face  of  our  own  country,  we  must  remember  that  its  aspect  to  the  Israelites  after 
the  weary  march  of  forty  years  through  the  desert  must  have  been  very  different.'' 

"Which  all  of  us  will  freely  grant.  But  it  truly  is  "  monoto 
nous  and  uninviting,"  and  there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  de 
scribing  it  as  being  otherwise. 

Of  all  the  lands  there  are  for  dismal  scenery,  I  think  Pales 
tine  must  be  the  prince.  The  hills  are  barren,  they  are  dull  of 
color,  they  are  unpicturesque  in  shape.  The  valleys  are  un 
sightly  deserts  fringed  with  a  feeble  vegetation  that  has  an  ex 
pression  about  it  of  being  sorrowful  and  despondent.  The  Dead 
Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee  sleep  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  stretch 
of  hill  and  plain  wherein  the  eye  rests  upon  no  pleasant  tint, 
no  striking  object,  no  soft  picture  dreaming  in  a  purple  haze  or 
mottled  with  the  shadows  of  the  clouds.  Every  outline  is 
harsh,  every  feature  is  distinct,  there  is  no  perspective — dis 
tance  works  no  enchantment  here.  It  is  a  hopeless,  dreary, 
heart-broken  land. 

Small  shreds  and  patches  of  it  must  be  very  beautiful  in  the 
full  flush  of  spring,  however,  and  all  the  more  beautiful  by 


1 


PRESENT    PALESTINE.  607 

contrast  with  the  far-reaching  desolation  that  surrounds  them 
on  every  side.  I  would  like  much  to  see  the  fringes  of  the 
Jordan  in  spring-time,  and  Shechem,  Esdraelon,  Ajalon  and 
the  borders  of  Galilee — but  even  then  these  spots  would  seem 
mere  toy  gardens  set  at  wide  intervals  in  the  waste  of  a  limit 
less  desolation. 

Palestine  sits  in  sackcloth  and  ashes.  Over  it  broods  the 
spell  of  a  curse  that  has  withered  its  fields  and  fettered  its  en 
ergies.  "Where  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  reared  their  domes  and 
towers,  that  solemn  sea  now  floods  the  plain,  in  whose  bitter 
waters  no  living  thing  exists — over  whose  waveless  surface  the 
blistering  air  hangs  motionless  and  dead — about  whose  borders 
nothing  grows  but  weeds,  and  scattering  tufts  of  cane,  and  that 
treacherous  fruit  that  promises  refreshment  to  parching  lips, 
but  turns  to  ashes  at  the  touch.  Nazareth  is  forlorn ;  about 
that  ford  of  Jordan  where  the  hosts  of  Israel  entered  the 
Promised  Land  with  songs  of  rejoicing,  one  finds  only  a  squalid 
camp  of  fantastic  Bedouins  of  the  desert ;  Jericho  the  accursed, 
lies  a  moldering  ruin,  to-day,  even  as  Joshua's  miracle  left  it 
more  than  three  thousand  years  ago ;  Bethlehem  and  Bethany, 
in.  their  poverty  and  their  humiliation,  have  nothing  about 
them  now  to  remind  one  that  they  once  knew  the  high  honor 
of  the  Saviour's  presence ;  the  hallowed  spot  where  the  shep 
herds  watched  their  flocks  by  night,  and  where  the  angels  sang 
Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men,  is  un  tenanted  by  any  living 
creature,  and  unblessed  by  any  feature  that  is  pleasant  to  the 
eye.  Renowned  Jerusalem  itself,  the  stateliest  name  in  history, 
has  lost  all  its  ancient  grandeur,  and  is  become  a  pauper  vil 
lage  ;  the  riches  of  Solomon  are  no  longer  there  to  compel  the 
admiration  of  visiting  Oriental  queens ;  the  wonderful  tem 
ple  which  was  the  pride  and  the  glory  of  Israel,  is  gone,  and 
the  Ottoman  crescent  is  lifted  above  the  spot  where,  on  that 
most  memorable  day  in  the  annals  of  the  world,  they  reared 
the  Holy  Cross.  The  noted  Sea  of  Galilee,  where  Roman 
fleets  once  rode  at  anchor  and  the  disciples  of  the  Saviour  sailed 
in  their  ships,  was  long  ago  deserted  by  the  devotees  of  war 
and  commerce,  and  its  borders  are  a  silent  wilderness  ;  Caper- 


608  PRESENT     PALESTINE. 

naum  is  a  shapeless  ruin ;  Magdala  is  the  home  of  beggared 
Arabs ;  Bethsaida  and  Chorazin  have  vanished  from  the  earth, 
and  the  "  desert  places"  round  about  them  where  thousands  of 
men  once  listened  to  the  Saviour's  voice  and  ate  the  miraculous 
bread,  sleep  in  the  hush  of  a  solitude  that  is  inhabited  only  by 
birds  of  prey  and  skulking  foxes. 

Palestine  is  desolate  and  unlovely.  And  why  should  it  be 
otherwise  ?  Can  the  curse  of  the  Deity  beautify  a  land  ? 

Palestine  is  no  more  of  this  work-day  world.  It  is  sacred 
to  poetry  and  tradition — it  is  dream-land. 


OHAPTEE    LVII. 

IT  was  worth  a  kingdom  to  be  at  sea  again.  It  was  a  relief 
to  drop  all  anxiety  whatsoever — all  questions  as  to  where 
we  should  go  ;  how  long  we  should  stay ;  whether  it  were  worth 
while  to  go  or  not ;  all  anxieties  about  the  condition  of  the 
horses  ;  all  such  questions  as  "  Shall  we  ever  get  to  water?" 
"  Shall  we  ever  lunch  ?"  "  Ferguson,  how  many  more  million 
miles  have  we  got  to  creep  under  this  awful  sun  before  we 
camp  ?"  It  was  a  relief  to  cast  all  these  torturing  little  anxieties 
far  away — ropes  of  steel  they  were,  and  every  one  with  a  separate 
and  distinct  strain  on  it — and  feel  the  temporary  contentment 
that  is  born  of  the  banishment  of  all  care  and  responsibility. 
We  did  not  look  at  the  compass :  we  did  not  care,  now,  where 
the  ship  went  to,  so  that  she  went  out  of  sight  of  land  as  quickly 
as  possible.  When  I  travel  again,  I  wish  to  go  in  a  pleasure 
ship.  No  amount  of  money  could  have  purchased  for  us,  in  a 
strange  vessel  and  among  unfamiliar  faces,  the  perfect  satis 
faction  and  the  sense  of  being  at  home  again-  which  we  expe 
rienced  when  we  stepped  on  board  the  "  Quaker  City," — our 
own  ship — after  this  wearisome  pilgrimage.  It  is  a  something 
we  have  felt  always  when  we  returned  to  her,  and  a  something 
we  had  no  desire  to  sell. 

We  took  off  our  blue  woollen  shirts,  our  spurs,  and  heavy 
boots,  our  sanguinary  revolvers  and  our  buckskin-seated  panta 
loons,  and  got  shaved  and  came  out  in  Christian  costume  once 
more.  All  but  Jack,  who  changed  all  other  articles  of  his 
dress,  but  clung  to  his  traveling  pantaloons.  They  still  pre 
served  their  ample  buckskin  seat  intact ;  and  so  his  short  pea- 
jacket  and  his  long,  thin  legs  assisted  to  make  him  a  pictu- 

39 


610 


FATHERLY    ADVICE. 


resque  object  whenever  he  stood  on  the  forecastle  looking  abroad 
upon  the  ocean  over  the  bows.  At  such  times  his  father's  last 
injunction  suggested  itself  to  me.  He  said : 

"  Jack,  my  boy,  you  are  about  to  go  among  a  brilliant  com 
pany  of  gentlemen  and  ladies,  who  are  refined  and  cultivated, 
and  thoroughly  accomplished  in  the  manners  and  customs  of 
good  society.  Listen  to  their  conversation,  study  their  habits 
of  life,  and  learn.  Be  polite  and  obliging  to  all,  and  considerate 
towards  every  one's  opinions,  failings  and  prejudices.  Command 
the  just  respect  of  all  your  fellow-voyagers,  even  though  you 
fail  to  win  their  friendly  regard.  And  Jack — don't  you  ever 
dare,  while  you  live,  appear  in  public  on  those  decks  in  fair 
weather,  in  a  costume  unbecoming  your  mother's  drawing- 
room  !" 

It  would  have  been 
worth  any  price  if  the 
father  of  this  hopeful 
youth  could  have  stepped 
on  board  some  time,  and 
seen  him  standing  high 
on  the  fore-castle,  pea- 
jacket,  tasseled  red  fez, 
buckskin  patch  and  all, 
—  placidly  contemplat 
ing  the  ocean — a  rare 
spectacle  for  any  body's 
drawing-room. 

After  a  pleasant  voyage 
and  a  good  rest,  we  drew 
near  to  Egypt  and  out  of 
the  mellowest  of  sunsets 
we  saw  the  domes  and 
minarets  of  Alexandria 
rise  into  view.  As  soon 
as  the  anchor  was  down, 

Jack  and  I  got  a  boat  and  went  ashore.  It  was  night  by  this 
time,  and  the  other  passengers  were  content  to  remain  at  home 


REAR   ELEVATION    OF   JACK. 


IN     EGYPT. 


611 


and  visit  ancient  Egypt  after  breakfast.  It  was  the  way  they 
did  at  Constantinople.  They  took  a  lively  interest  in  new 
countries,  but  their  school-boy  impatience  had  worn  off,  and 
they  had  learned  that  it  was  wisdom  to  take  things  easy  and 
go  along  comfortably — these  old  countries  do  not  go  away  in 
the  night ;  they  stay  till  after  breakfast. 

When  we  reached  the  pier  we  found  an  army  of  Egyptian 
boys  with  donkeys  no  larger  than  themselves,  waiting  for  pas 
sengers — for  donkeys  are  the  omnibuses  of  Egypt.  We  pre 
ferred  to  walk,  but  we  could  not  have  our  own  way.  The 
boys  crowded  about  us,  clamored  around  us,  and  slewed  their 
donkeys  exactly  across  our  path,  no  matter  which  way  we 
turned.  They  were  good-natured  rascals,  and  so  were  the 
donkeys.  We  mounted,  and  the  boys  ran  behind  us  and  kept 
the  donkeys  in  a  furious  gallop,  as  is  the  fashion  at  Damascus. 


STREET   IN     ALEXANDRIA. 


I  believe  I  would  rather  ride  a  donkey  than  any  beast  in  the 
world.     He  goes  briskly,  he  puts  on  no  airs,  he  is  docile,  though 


612 


ADVENT    OF    THE     LOST    TRIBES. 


opinionated.  Satan  himself  could  not  scare  him,  and  he  is  con 
venient — very  convenient.  When  you  are  tired  riding  you  can 
rest  your  feet  on  the  ground  and  let  him  gallop  from  under  you. 
We  found  the  hotel  and  secured  rooms,  and  were  happy  to 
know  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  stopped  there  once.  They 
had  it  everywhere  on  signs.  No  other  princes  had  stopped 
there  since,  till  Jack  and  I  came.  We  wrent  abroad  through 
the  town,  then,  and  found  it  a  city  of  huge  commercial  build 
ings,  and  broad,  handsome  streets  brilliant  with  gas-light.  By 
night  it  was  a  sort  of  reminiscence  of  Paris.  But  finally  Jack 
found  an  ice-cream  saloon,  and  that  closed  investigations  for 
that  evening.  The  weather  was  very  hot,  it  had  been  many  a 
day  since  Jack  had  seen  ice-cream,  and  so  it  was  useless  to 
talk  of  leaving  the  saloon  till  it  shut  up. 

In  the  morning  the  lost  tribes  of  America  came  ashore  and 
infested  the  hotels  and  took  possession  of  all  the  donkeys  and 
other  open  barouches  that  offered.  They  went  in  picturesque 
procession  to  the  American  Consul's ;  to  the  great  gardens  ;  to 

Cleopatra's  Needles ;  to 
Pompey's  Pillar  ;  to  the 
palace  of  the  Viceroy  of 
Egypt ;  to  the  Nile ;  to 
the  superb  groves  of  date- 
palms.  One  of  our  most 
inveterate  relic-hunters 
had  his  hammer  with 
him,  and  tried  to  break  a 
fragment  off  the  upright 
Needle  and  could  not  do 
it ;  he  tried  the  prostrate 
one  and  failed;  he  bor 
rowed  a  heavy  sledge 
hammer  from  a  mason 
and  failed  again.  He 

VICEROY   OF   EGYPT.  .  ?     V>m  J 

tried  Pompey  s  Pillar,  and 

this  baffled  him.     Scattered  all  about  the  mighty  monolith  were 
sphinxes  of  noble  countenance,  carved  out  of  Egyptian  granite  as 


THE     RELIC-HUNTER.  613 

hard  as  blue  steel,  and  whose  shapely  features  the  wear  of  live 
thousand  years  had  failed  to  mark  or  mar.  The  relic-hunter 
battered  at  these  persistently,  and  sweated  profusely  over  his 
work.  lie  might  as  well  have  attempted  to  deface  the 
moon.  They  regarded  him  serenely  with  the  stately  smile 
they  had  worn  so  long,  and  which  seemed  to  say,  "  Peck 
away,  poor  insect ;  we  were  not  made  to  fear  such  as  you ; 
in  ten-score  dragging  ages  we  have  seen  more  of  your  kind 
than  there  are  sands  at  your  feet :  have  they  left  a  blemish 
upon  us?" 

But  I  am  forgetting  the  Jaffa  Colonists.  At  Jaffa  we  had 
taken  on  board  some  forty  members  of  a  very  celebrated  com 
munity.  They  were  male  and  female ;  babies,  young  boys  and 
young  girls  ;  young  married  people,  and  some  who  had  passed  a 
shade  beyond  the  prime  of  life.  I  refer  to  the  "  Adams  Jaffa 
Colony."  Others  had  deserted  before.  We  left  in  Jaffa  Mr. 
Adams,  his  wife,  and  fifteen  unfortunates  who  not  only  had  no 
money  but  did  not  know  where  to  turn  or  whither  to  go.  Such 
was  the  statement  made  to  'us.  Our  forty  were  miserable 
enough  in  the  first  place,  and  they  lay  about  the  decks  seasick 
all  the  voyage,  which  about  completed  their  misery,  I  take  it. 
However,  one  or  two  young  men  remained  upright,  and  by 
constant  persecution  we  wormed  out  of  them  some  little  infor 
mation.  They  gave  it  reluctantly  and  in  a  very  fragmentary 
condition,  for,  having  been  shamefully  humbugged  by  their 
prophet,  they  felt  humiliated  and  unhappy.  In  such  circum 
stances  people  do  not  like  to  talk. 

The  colony  was  a  complete  fiasco.  I  have  already  said  that 
such  as  could  get  away  did  so,  from  time  to  time.  The 
prophet  Adams — once  an  actor,  then  several  other  things,  after 
ward  a  Mormon  and  a  missionary,  always  an  adventurer — re 
mains  at  Jaffa  with  his  handful  of  sorrowful  subjects.  The 
forty  we  brought  away  with  us  were  chiefly  destitute,  though 
not  all  of  them.  They  wished  to  get  to  Egypt.  What  might 
become  of  them  then  they  did  not  know  and  probably  did  not 
care — any  thing  to  get  away  from  hated  Jaffa.  They  had  little 
to  hope  for.  Because  after  many  appeals  to  the  sympathies  of 


614 


THE    JAFFA    COLONISTS. 


New  England,  made  by  strangers  of  Boston,  through  the  news 
papers,  and  after  the  establishment  of  an  office  there  for  the 
reception  of  moneyed  contributions  for  the  Jaffa  colonists, 

One  Dollar  was  sub 
scribed.  The  consul- 
general  for  Egypt 
showed  me  the  news- 
paper  paragraph 
which  mentioned  the 
circumstance  and  men 
tioned  also  the  discon 
tinuance  of  the  effort 
and  the  closing  of  the 
office.  It  was  evident 
that  practical  New 
England  was  not  sorry 
to  be  rid  of  such  vis 
ionaries  and  was  not 
in  the  least  inclined 

EASTERN  MONARCH.  t0     nirG     anj     b°dj     tO 

bring  them  back  to 

her.  Still,  to  get  to  Egypt,  was  something,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
unfortunate  colonists,  hopeless  as  the  prospect  seemed  of  ever 
getting  further. 

Thus  circumstanced,  they  landed  at  Alexandria  from  our 
ship.  One  of  our  passengers,  Mr.  Moses  S.  Beach,  of  the  New 
York  Sun,  inquired  of  the  consul-general  what  it  would  cost 
to  send  these  people  to  their  home  in  Maine  by  the  way  of 
Liverpool,  and  he  said  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in  gold  would 
do  it.  Mr.  Beach  gave  his  check  for  the  money  and  so  the 
troubles  of  the  Jaffa  colonists  were  at  an  end.* 

Alexandria  was  too  much  like  a  European  city  to  be  novel, 
and  we  soon  tired  of  it.  We  took  the  cars  and  came  up  here 

*  It  was  an  unselfish  act  of  benevolence ;  it  was  done  without  any  ostentation, 
and  has  never  been  mentioned  in  any  newspaper,  I  think.  Therefore  it  is  refresh 
ing  to  learn  now,  several  months  after  the  above  narrative  was  written,  that 
another  man  received  all  the  credit  of  this  rescue  of  the  colonists.  Such  is  life. 


THE     GIFTED     PORTER. 


615 


MOSES  S.   BEACH. 


to  ancient  Cairo,  which  is  an  Oriental  city  and  of  the  com- 
pletest  pattern.  There  is  little  about  it  to  disabuse  one's  mind 
of  the  error  if  he  should 
take  it  into  his  head  that 
he  was  in  the  heart  of  Ara 
bia.  Stately  camels  and 
dromedaries,  swarthy 
Egyptians,  and  likewise 
Turks  and  black  Ethio 
pians,  turbaned,  sashed, 
and  blazing  in  a  rich  va 
riety  of  Oriental  costumes 
of  all  shades  of  flashy 
colors,  are  what  one  sees 
on  every  hand  crowding 
the  narrow  streets  and 
the  honeycombed  ba 
zaars.  We  are  stopping 
at  Shepherd's  Hotel, 
which  is  the  worst  on  earth  except  the  one  I  stopped  at  once 
in  a  small  town  in  the  United  States.  It  is  pleasant  to  read 
this  sketch  in  my  note-book,  now,  and  know  that  I  can  stand 
Shepherd's  Hotel,  sure,  because  I  have  been  in  one  just  like  it 
in  America  and  survived  : 

I  stopped  at  the  Benton  House.  It  used  to  be  a  good  hotel,  but  that  proves 
nothing — I  used  to  be  a  good  boy,  for  that  matter.  Both  of  us  have  lost  character 
of  late  years.  The  Benton  is  not  a  good  hotel.  The  Benton  lacks  a  very  great 
deal  of  being  a  good  hotel.  Perdition  is  full  of  better  hotels  than  the  Benton. 

It  was  late  at  night  when  I  got  there,  and  I  told  the  clerk  I  would  like  plenty 
of  lights,  because  I  wanted  to  read  an  hour  or  two.  When  I  reached  No.  15  with 
the  porter  (we  came  along  a  dim  hall  that  was  clad  in  ancient  carpeting,  faded, 
worn  out  in  many  places,  and  patched  with  old  scraps  of  oil  cloth — a  hat  that  sank 
under  one's  feet,  and  creaked  dismally  to  every  footstep,)  he  struck  a  light — two 
inches  of  sallow,  sorrowful,  consumptive  tallow  candle,  that  burned  blue,  and  sput 
tered,  and  got  discouraged  and  went  out.  The  porter  lit,  it  again,  and  I  asked  if  that 
was  all  the  light  the  clerk  sent.  He  said,  "  Oh  no,  I've  got  another  one  here,"  and: 
he  produced  another  couple  of  inches  of  tallow  candle.  I  said,  "Light  them  both 
— I'll  have  to  have  one  to  see  the  other  by."  He  did  it,  but  the  result  was  drearier 
than  darkness  itself.  He  was  a  cheery,  accgtm.modatiug.  rascal.  He  said  he  would 


616  THE     GIFTED     PORTER. 

go  "  somewheres  "  and  steal  a  lamp.  I  abetted  and  encouraged  him  in  his  criminal 
design.  I  heard  the  landlord  get  after  him  in  the  hall  ten  minutes  afterward. 

"Where  are  you  going  with  that  lamp?" 

"  Fifteen  wants  it,  sir." 

"Fifteen  !  why  he's  got  a  double  lot  of  candles — does  the  mnn  want  to  illumi 
nate  the  house  ? — does  he  want  to  get  up  a  torch-light  procession  ? — what  is  he  up 
to,  anyhow?" 

"  He  don't  like  them  candles — says  he  wants  a  lamp." 

"  "Why  what  in  the  nation  does — why  I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing?  What  on 
earth  can  he  want  with  that  lamp  ?" 

"  Well,  he  only  wants  to  read — that's  what  he  says." 

"Wants  to  read,  does  he? — ain't  satisfied  with  a  thousand  candles,  but  has  to 
have  a  lamp ! — I  do  wonder  what  the  devil  that  fellow  wants  that  lamp  for  ?  Take 
him  another  candle,  and  then  if " 

"  But  he  wants  the  lamp — says  he'll  burn  the  d — d  old  house  down  if  he  don't 
get  a  lamp!"  (a  remark  which  I  never  made.) 

"  I'd  like  to  see  him  at  it  once.  Well,  you  take  it  along — but  I  swear  it  beats 
my  time,  though — and  see  if  you  can't  find  out  what  in  the  very  nation  he  wants 
with  that  lamp." 

And  he  went  off  growling  to  himself  and  still  wondering  and  wondering  over  the 
unaccountable  conduct  of  No.  15.  The  lamp  was  a  good  one,  but  it  revealed  some 
disagreeable  things — a  bed  in  the  suburbs  of  a  desert  of  room — a  bed  that  had  hills 
and  valleys  in  it,  and  you'd  have  to  accommodate  your  body  to  the  impression  left 
in  it  by  the  man  that  slept  there  last,  before  you  could  lie  comfortably ;  a  carpet 
that  had  seen  better  days ;  a  melancholy  washstand  in  a  remote  corner,  and  a  de 
jected  pitcher  on  it  sorrowing  over  a  broken  nose ;  a  looking-glass  split  across  the 
centre,  which  chopped  your  head  off  at  the  chin  and  made  you  look  like  some 
dreadful  unfinished  monster  or  other;  the  paper  peeling  in  shreds  from  the  walls. 

I  sighed  and  said :  "  This  is  charming ;  and  now  don't  you  think  you  could  get 
me  something  to  read  ?" 

The  porter  said,  "Oh,  certainly;  the  old  man's  got  dead  loads  of  books;"  and  he 
was  gone  before  I  could  tell  him  what  sort  of  literature  I  would  rather  have.  And 
yet  his  countenance  expressed  the  utmost  confidence  in  his  ability  to  execute  the 
commission  with  credit  to  himself.  The  old  man  made  a  descent  on  him. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  .that  pile  of  books?" 

"  Fifteen  wants  'em,  sir." 

"  Fifteen,  is  it  ?  He'll  want  a  warming-pan,  next— he'll  want  a  nurse !  Take 
him  every  thing  there  is  in  the  house — take  him  the  bar-keeper — take  him  the  bag 
gage-wagon — take  him  a  chamber-maid !  Confound  me,  I  never  saw  any  thing  like 
it.  What  did  he  say  he  wants  with  those  books  ?" 

"  Wants  to  read  'em,  like  enough ;  it  ain't  likely  he  wants  to  eat  'em,  I  don't 
.reckon." 

"Wants  to  read  'em — wants  to  read  'em  this  time  of  night,  the  infernal  lunatic! 
Well,. he  can't  have  them." 

"  But  he  says  he's  mor'ly  bound  to  have  'em ;  he  says  he'll  just  go  a-rairin'  and 
a-chargin'  through  this  house  and  raise  more well,  there's  no  tellin'  what  he 


THE     GIFTED     PORTER. 


617 


won't  do  if  he  don't  get  'em ;   because  he's  drunk  and  crazy  and  desperate,  and 
nothing'll  soothe  him  down  but  them  cussed  books."     [I  had  not  made  any  threats, 
and  was  not  in  the  condi 
tion  ascribed  to  mo  by  the 
porter.] 

"Well,  goon;  but  I  will 
be  around  when  he  goesvto 
rairing  and  charging,  and 
the  first  rair  he  makes  I'll 
make  him  rair  out  of  the 
window."  And  then  the 
old  gentleman  went  off, 
growling  as  before. 

The  genius  of  that  por 
ter  was  something  won 
derful.  He  put  an  armful 
of  books  on  the  bed  and 
said  "  Good  night "  as  con 
fidently  as  if  he  knew  per 
fectly  well  that  those  books 
were  exactly  my  style  of  ROOM  N0  15 

reading  matter.     And  well 

he  might.  His  selection  covered  the  whole  range  of  legitimate  literature.  It  com 
prised  "The  Great  Consummation,"  by  Rev.  Dr.  Cummings — theology;  "Revised 
Statutes  of  the  State  of  Missouri" — law;  "The  Complete  Horse-Doctor" — medi 
cine;  "The  Toilers  of  the  Sea,"  by  Victor  Hugo — romance;  "The  works  of 
William  Shakspeare  " — poetry.  I  shall  never  cease  to  admire  the  tact  and  the 
intelligence  of  that  gifted  porter. 

But  all  the  donkeys  in  Christendom,  and  most  of  the  Egyp 
tian  boys,  I  think,  are  at  the  door,  and  there  is  some  noise 
going  on,  not  to  put  it  in  stronger  language. — We  are  about 
starting  to  the  illustrious  Pyramids  of  Egypt,  and  the  donkeys 
for  the  voyage  are  under  inspection.  I  will  go  and  select  one 
before  the  choice  animals  are  all  taken. 


CHAPTEE    LYIII. 

HE  donkeys  were  all  good,  all  handsome,  all  strong  and  in 
good  condition,  all  fast  and  all  willing  to  prove  it.  They 
were  the  best  we  had  found  any  where,  and  the  most  recherche. 
I  do  not  know  what  recherche  is,  but  that  is  what  these  donkeys 
were,  anyhow.  Some  were  of  a  soft  mouse-color,  and  the 
others  were  white,  black,  and  vari-colored.  Some  were  close- 
shaven,  all  over,  except  that  a  tuft  like  a  paint-brush  was  left 
on  the  end  of  the  tail.  Others  were  so  shaven  in  fanciful  land 
scape  garden  patterns,  as  to  mark  their  bodies  with  curving 
lines,  which  were  bounded  on  one  side  by  hair  and  on  the  other 
by  the  close  plush  left  by  the  shears.  They  had  all  been  newly 
barbered,  and  were  exceedingly  stylish.  Several  of  the  white 
ones  were  barred  like  zebras  with  rainbow  stripes  of  blue  and 
red  and  yellow  paint.  These  were  indescribably  gorgeous.  Dan 
and  Jack  selected  from  this  lot  because  they  brought  back  Ital 
ian  reminiscences  of  the  "  old  masters."  The  saddles  were  the 
high,  stuffy,  frog-shaped  things  we  had  known  in  Ephesus  and 
Smyrna.  The  donkey-boys  were  lively  young  Egyptian  ras 
cals  who  could  follow  a  donkey  and  keep  him  in  a  canter  half 
a  day  without  tiring.  "We  had  plenty  of  spectators  when  we 
mounted,  for  the  hotel  was  full  of  English  people  bound  over 
land  to  India  and  officers  getting  ready  for  the  African  cam 
paign  against  the  Abyssinian  King  Theodoras.  We  were  not 
a  very  large  party,  but  as  we  charged  through  the  streets  of  the 
great  metropolis,  we  made  noise  for  five  hundred,  and  dis 
played  activity  and  created  excitement  in  proportion.  Nobody 
can  steer  a  donkey,  and  some  collided  with  camels,  dervishes, 


A    WILD     HIDE.  619 

effendis,  asses,  beggars  and  every  thing  else  that  offered  to  the 
donkeys  a  reasonable  chance  for  a  collision.  When  we  turned 
into  the  broad  avenue  that  leads  out  of  the  city  toward  Old 
Cairo,  there  was  plenty  of  room.  The  walls  of  stately  date- 
palms  that  fenced  the  gardens  and  bordered  the  way,  threw 
their  shadows  down  and  made  the  air  cool  and  bracing.  We 
rose  to  the  spirit  of  the  time  and  the  race  became  a  wild  rout,  a 
stampede,  a  terrific  panic.  I  wish  to  live  to  enjoy  it  again. 

Somewhere  along  this  route  we  had  a  few  startling  exhibi 
tions  of  Oriental  simplicity.  A  girl  apparently  thirteen  years 
of  age  came  along  the  great  thoroughfare  dressed  like  Eve  be 
fore  the  fall.  We  would  have  called  her  thirteen  at  home ; 
but  here  girls  who  look  thirteen  are  often  not  more  than 
nine,  in  reality.  Occasionally  we  saw  stark-naked  men  of  su 
perb  build,  bathing,  and  making  no  attempt  at  concealment. 
However,  an  hour's  acquaintance  with  this  cheerful  custom 
reconciled  the  pilgrims  to  it,  and  then  it  ceased  to  occasion 
remark.  Thus  easily  do  even  the  most  startling  novelties  grow 
tame  and  spiritless  to  these  sight-surfeited  wanderers. 

Arrived  at  Old  Cairo,  the  camp-followers  took  up  the  don 
keys  and  tumbled  them  bodily  aboard  a  small  boat  with  a  la 
teen  sail,  and  we  followed  and  got  under  way.  The  deck  was 
closely  packed  with  donkeys  and  men ;  the  two  sailors  had  to 
climb  over  and  under  and  through  the  wedged  mass  to  work 
the  sails,  and  the  steersman  had  to  crowd  four  or  five  donkeys 
out  of  the  way  when  he  wished  to  swing  his  tiller  and  put  his 
helm  hard-down.  But  what  were  their  troubles  to  us  ?  We 
had  nothing  to  do ;  nothing  to  do  but  enjoy  the  trip ;  nothing 
to  do  but  shove  the  donkeys  off  our  corns  and  look  at  the  charm 
ing  scenery  of  the  Nile. 

On  the  island  at  our  right  was  the  machine  they  call  the  Ki 
lometer,  a  stone-column  whose  business  it  is  to  mark  the  rise  of 
the  river  and  prophecy  whether  it  will  reach  only  thirty-two 
feet  and  produce  a  famine,  or  whether  it  will  properly  flood 
the  land  at  forty  and  produce  plenty,  or  whether  it  will  rise 
to  forty-three  and  bring  death  and  destruction  to  flocks  and 
crops — but  how  it  does  all  this  they  could  not  explain  to  us  so 


620 


MOSES     IN     THE     BULRUSHES. 


that  we  could  understand.  On  the  same  island  is  still  shown 
the  spot  where  Pharaoh's  daughter  found  Moses  in  the  bul 
rushes.  Near  the  spot  we 
sailed  from,  the  Holy  Fam 
ily  dwelt  when  they  so 
journed  in  Egypt  till  Her 
od  should  complete  his 
slaughter  of  the  innocents. 
The  same  tree  they  rested 
under  when  they  tirst  ar 
rived,  was  there  a  short 
time  ago,  but  the  Viceroy 
of  Egypt  sent  it  to  the  Em 
press  Eugenie  lately.  He 
was  just  in  time,  otherwise 
our  pilgrims  would  have 
had  it. 

The  Nile  at  this  point  is 
muddy,  swift  and  turbid, 
and  does  not  lack  a  great 
deal  of  being  as  wide  as  the 
Mississippi. 

We  scrambled  up  the 
steep  bank  at  the  shabby 
town  of  Ghizeh,  mounted 
the  donkeys  again,  and 
scampered  away.  For  four 
or  five  miles  the  route  lay 
along  a  high  embankment  which  they  say  is  to  be  the  bed  of 
a  railway  the  Sultan  means  to  build  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  when  the  Empress  of  the  French  comes  to  visit  him  she 
can  go  to  the  Pyramids  in  comfort.  This  is  true  Oriental  hos 
pitality.  I  am  very  glad  it  is  our  privilege  to  have  donkeys 
instead  of  cars. 

At  the  distance  of  a  few  miles  the  Pyramids  rising  above  the 
palms,  looked  very  clean-cut,  very  grand  and  imposing,  and 
very  soft  and  filmy,  as  well.  They  swam  in  a  rich  haze  that 


KILOMETER. 


DISTANT     VIEW     OF     THE     PYRAMIDS.  621 

took  from  them  all  suggestions  of  unfeeling  stone,  and  made 
them  seem  only  the  airy  nothings  of  a  dream — structures 
which  might  blossom  into  tiers  of  vague  arches,  or  ornate  col 
onnades,  may  be,  and  change  and  change  again,  into  all  grace 
ful  forms  of  architecture,  while  we  looked,  and  then  melt  deli- 
ciously  away  and  blend  with  the  tremulous  atmosphere. 

At  the  end  of  the  levee  we  left  the  mules  and  went  in  a  sail 
boat  across  an  arm  of  the  Nile  or  an  overflow,  and  landed 
where  the  sands  of  the  Great  Sahara  left  their  embankment, 
as  straight  as  a  wall,  along  the  verge  of  the  alluvial  plain  of 
the  river.  A  laborious  walk  in  the  flaming  sun  brought  us  to 
the  foot  of  the  great  Pyramid  of  Cheops.  It  was  a  fairy  vision 
no  longer.  It  was  a  corrugated,  unsightly  mountain  of  stone. 
Each  of  its  monstrous  sides  was  a  wide  stairway  which  rose 
upward,  step  above  step,  narrowing  as  it  went,  till  it  tapered 
to  a  point  far  aloft  in  the  air.  Insect  men  and  women — pil 
grims  from  the  Quaker  City — were  creeping  about  its  dizzy 
perches,  and  one  little  black  swarm  were  waving  postage 
stamps  from  the  airy  summit — handkerchiefs  will  be  under 
stood. 

Of  course  we  were  besieged  by  a  rabble  of  muscular  Egyp 
tians  and  Arabs  who  wanted  the  contract  of  dragging  us  to  the 
top — all  tourists  are.  Of  course  you  could  not  hear  your  own 
voice  for  the  din  that  was  around  you.  Of  course  the  Sheiks 
said  they  were  the  only  responsible  parties ;  that  all  contracts 
must  be  made  with  them,  all  moneys  paid  over  to  them,  and 
none  exacted  from  us  by  any  but  themselves  alone.  Of  course 
they  contracted  that  the  varlets  who  dragged  us  up  should  not 
mention  bucksheesh  once.  For  such  is  the  usual  routine.  Of 
course  we  contracted  with  them, paid  them,  were  delivered  into 
the  hands  of  the  draggers,  dragged  up  the  Pyramids,  and  har 
ried  and  be-deviled  for  bucksheesh  from  the  foundation  clear  to 
the  summit.  We  paid  it,  too,  for  we  were  purposely  spread 
very  far  apart  over  the  vast  side  of  the  Pyramid.  There  was 
no  help  near  if  we  called,  and  the  Herculeses  who  dragged  us 
had  a  way  of  asking  sweetly  and  flatteringly  for  bucksheesh, 
which  was  seductive,  and  of  looking  fierce  and  threatening  to 


622 


THE    ASCENT. 


throw  us  down  the  precipice,  which  was  persuasive  and  con 
vincing. 

Each  step  being  full  as  high  as  a  dinner-table  ;  there  being 
very,  very  many  of  the  steps  ;  an  Arab  having  hold  of  each  of 
our  arms  and  springing  upward  from  step  to  step  and  snatch 
ing  us  with  them,  forcing  us  to  lift  our  feet  as  high  as  our  breasts 
every  time,  and  do  it  rapidly  and  keep  it  up  till  we  were  ready 
to  faint,  who  shall  say  it  is  not  lively,  exhilarating,  lacerating, 
muscle-straining,  bone-wrenching  and  perfectly  excruciating 
and  exhausting  pastime,  climbing  the  Pyramids  ?  I  beseeched 
the  varlets  not  to  twist  all  my  joints  asunder ;  I  iterated,  reit 
erated,  even  swore  to  them  that  I  did  not  wish  to  beat  any  body 
to  the  top  ;  did  all  I  could  to  convince  them  that  if  I  got  there 


the  last  of  all  I  would  feel 
blessed  above  men  and 
grateful  to  them  forever ; 
I  begged  them,  prayed 
them,  pleaded  with  them 
to  let  me  stop  and  rest  a 
moment — only  one  little 
moment:  and  they  only 

answered  with  some  more  frightful  springs,  and  an  unenlisted 
volunteer  behind  opened  a  bombardment  of  determined  boosts 


ASCENT  OF  THE  PYRAMID. 


THE     ASCENT.  623 

with  his  head  which  threatened  to  batter  my  whole  political 
economy  to  wreck  and  ruin. 

Twice,  for  one  minute,  they  let  me  rest  while  they  extorted 
bucksheesh,  and  then  continued  their  maniac  flight  up  the  Pyr 
amid.  They  wished  to  beat  the  other  parties.  It  was  nothing 
to  them  that  I,  a  stranger,  must  be  sacrificed  upon  the  altar  of 
their  unholy  ambition.  But  in  the  midst  of  sorrow,  joy  blooms. 
Even  in  this  dark  hour  I  had  a  sweet  consolation.  For  I  knew 
that  except  these  Mohammedans  repented  they  would  go 
straight  to  perdition  some  day.  And  they  never  repent — they 
never  forsake  their  paganism.  This  thought  calmed  me, 
cheered  me,  and  I  sank  down,  limp  and  exhausted,  upon  the 
summit,  but  happy,  so  happy  and  serene  within. 

On  the  one  hand,  a  mighty  sea  of  yellow  sand  stretched 
away  toward  the  ends  of  the  earth,  solemn,  silent,  shorn  of  veg 
etation,  its  solitude  uncheered  by  any  forms  of  creature  life  ; 
on  the  other,  the  Eden  of  Egypt  was  spread  below  us — a  broad 
green  floor,  cloven  by  the  sinuous  river,  dotted  with  villages, 
its  vast  distances  measured  and  marked  by  the  diminishing 
stature  of  receding  clusters  of  palms.  It  lay  asleep  in  an  en 
chanted  atmosphere.  There  was  no  sdund,  no  motion.  Above 
the  date-plumes  in  the  middle  distance,  swelled  a  domed  and 
pinnacled  mass,  glimmering  through  a  tinted,  exquisite  mist ; 
away  toward  the  horizon  a  dozen  shapely  pyramids  watched 
over  ruined  Memphis :  and  at  our  feet  the  bland  impassible 
Spliynx  looked  out  upon  the  picture  from  her  throne  in  the 
sands  as  placidly  and  pensively  as  she  had  looked  upon  its  like 
full  fifty  lagging  centuries  ago. 

"We  suffered  torture  no  pen  can  describe  from  the  hungry  ap 
peals  for  bucksheesh  that  gleamed  from  Arab  eyes  and  poured 
incessantly  from  Arab  lips.  Why  try  to  call  up  the  traditions 
of  vanished  Egyptian  grandeur  ;  why  try  to  fancy  Egypt  fol 
lowing  dead  Rameses  to  his  tomb  in  the  Pyramid,  or  the  long 
multitude  of  Israel  departing  over  the  desert  yonder  ?  Why 
try  to  think  at  all  ?  The  thing  was  impossible.  One  must 
bring  his  meditations  cut  and  dried,  or  else  cut  and  dry  them 
afterward. 


624  AX     ARAB     EXPLOIT. 

The  traditional  Arab  proposed,  in  the  traditional  way,  to  run 
down  Cheops,  cross  the  eighth  of  a  mile  of  sand  intervening 
between  it  and  the  tall  pyramid  of  Cephron,  ascend  to  Ceph- 
ron's  summit  and  return  to  us  on  the  top  of  Cheops — all  in 
nine  minutes  by  the  watch,  and  the  whole  sen-ice  to  be  ren 
dered  for  a  single  dollar.  In  the  first  flush  of  irritation,  I  said 
let  the  Arab  and  his  exploits  go  to  the  mischief.  But  stay. 
The  upper  third  of  Cephron  was  coated  with  dressed  marble, 
smooth  as  glass.  A  blessed  thought  entered  my  brain.  He 
must  infallibly  break  his  neck.  Close  the  contract  with  dis 
patch,  I  said,  and  let  him  go.  He  started.  We  watched.  He 
went  bounding  down  the  vast  broadside,  spring  after  spring, 
like  an  ibex.  He  grew  small  and  smaller  till  he  became  a 
bobbing  pigmy,  away  down  toward  the  bottom — then  disap 
peared.  We  turned  and  peered  over  the  other  side — forty  sec 
onds — eighty  seconds — a  hundred — happiness,  he  is  dead  al 
ready  ! — two  minutes — and  a  quarter — "  There  he  goes  !"  Too 
true — it  was  too  true.  He  was  very  small,  now.  Gradually, 
but  surely,  he  overcame  the  level  ground.  He  began  to  spring 
and  climb  again.  Up,  up,  up — at  last  he  reached  the  smooth 
coating — now  for  it.  But  he  clung  to  it  with  toes  and  fingers, 
like  a  fly.  He  crawled  this  way  and  that — away  to  the  right, 
slanting  upward — away  to  the  left,  still  slanting  upward — and 
stood  at  last,  a  black  peg  on  the  summit,  and  waved  his  pigmy 
scarf!  Then  he  crept  downward  to  the  raw  steps  again,  then 
picked  up  his  agile  heels  and  flew.  We  lost  him  presently. 
But  presently  again  we  saw  him  under  us,  mounting  with  un- 
diminished  energy.  Shortly  he  bounded  into  our  midst  with  a 
gallant  war-whoop.  Time,  eight  minutes,  forty-one  seconds. 
He  had  won.  His  bones  were  intact.  It  was  a  failure.  I  re 
flected.  I  said  to  myself,  he  is  tired,  and  must  grow  dizzy.  I 
will  risk  another  dollar  on  him. 

He  started  again.  Made  the  trip  again.  Slipped  on  the 
smooth  coating — I  almost  had  him.  But  an  infamous  crevice 
saved  him.  He  was  with  us  once  more — perfectly  sound. 
Time,  eight  minutes,  forty-six  seconds. 


AX     ARAB     EXPLOIT. 


625 


I  said  to  Dan,  "  Lend  me  a  dollar — I  can  beat  this  game,  yet." 

Worse  and  worse.     He  won  again.     Time,  eight  minutes, 

forty -eight  seconds.     I  was  out  of  all  patience,  now.     I  was 


desperate. — M  o  n  e  y 
was  no  longer  of  any 
consequence.  I  said, 
"  Sirrah,  I  will  give 
you  a  hundred  dol 
man  HOPES  FRUSTRATED.  lai'S  tO  jlllllp  off  this 

pyramid  head  first. 

If  you  do  not  like  the  terms,  name  your  bet.  I  scorn  to  stand 
on  expenses  now.  I  will  stay  right  here  and  risk  money  on 
you  as  long  as  Dan  has  got  a  cent." 

I  was  in  a  fair  way  to  win,  now,  for  it  was  a  dazzling  oppor 
tunity  for  an  Arab.  He  pondered  a  moment,  and  would  have 
clone  it,  I  think,  but  his  mother  arrived,  then,  and  interfered. 
Her  tears  moved  me — I  never  can  look  upon  the  tears  of 
woman  with  indifference — and  I  said  I  would  give  her  a  hun 
dred  to  jump  off,  too. 

But  it  was  a  failure.  The  Arabs  are  too  high-priced  in 
Egypt.  They  put  on  airs  unbecoming  to  such  savages. 


626  INSIDE     THE     PYRAMID. 

We  descended,  hot  and  out  of  humor.  The  dragoman  lit 
candles,  and  we  all  entered  a  hole  near  the- base  of  the  pyra 
mid,  attended  by  a  crazy  rabble  of  Arabs  who  thrust  their  ser 
vices  upon  us  uninvited.  They  dragged  us  up  a  long  inclined 
chute,  and  dripped  candle-grease  all  over  us.  This  chute  was 
not  more  than  twice  as  wide  and  high  as  a  Saratoga  trunk, 
and  was  walled,  roofed  and  floored  with  solid  blocks  of  Egyp 
tian  granite  as  wide  as  a  wardrobe,  twice  as  thick  and  three 
times  as  long.  We  kept  on  climbing,  through  the  oppressive 
gloom,  till  I  thought  we  ought  to  be  Hearing  the  top  of  the  pyr 
amid  again,  and  then  came  to  the  u  Queen's  Chamber,"  and 
shortly  to  the  Chamber  of  the  King.  These  large  apartments 
were  tombs.  The  walls  were  built  of  monstrous  masses  of 
smoothed  granite,  neatly  joined  together.  Some  of  them  were 
nearly  as  large  square  as  an  ordinary  parlor.  A  great  stone 
sarcophagus  like  a  bath-tub  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  King's 
Chamber.  Around  it  were  gathered  a  picturesque  group  of 
Arab  savages  and  soiled  and  tattered  pilgrims,  who  held  their 
candles  aloft  in  the  gloom  while  they  chattered,  and  the  winking 
blurs  of  light  shed  a  dim  glory  down  upon  one  of  the  irrepres 
sible  memento-seekers  who  was  pecking  at  the  venerable  sar 
cophagus  with  his  sacrilegious  hammer. 

"We  struggled  out  to  the  open  air  and  the  bright  sunshine, 
and  for  the  space  of  thirty  minutes  received  ragged  Arabs  by 
couples,  dozens  and  platoons,  and  paid  them  bucksheesh  for 
services  they  swore  and  proved  by  each  other  that  they  had 
rendered,  but  which  we  had  not  been  aware  of  before — and  as 
each  party  was  paid,  they  dropped  into  the  rear  of  the  proces 
sion  and  in  due  time  arrived  again  with  a  newly-invented  de 
linquent  list  for  liquidation. 

We  lunched  in  the  shade  of  the  pyramid,  and  in  the  midst 
of  this  encroaching  and  unwelcome  company,  and  then  Dan 
and  Jack  and  I  started  away  for  a  walk.  A  howling  swarm  of 
beggars  followed  us — surrounded  us — almost  headed  us  off.  A 
sheik,  iri  flowing  white  bournous  and  gaudy  head-gear,  was 
with  them.  He  wanted  more  bucksheesh.  But  we  had  adopted 
a  new  code — it  was  millions  for  defense,  but  not  a  cent  for 


STRATEGY. 


627 


bucksheesh.  I  asked  him  if  he  could  persuade  the  others  to  de 
part  if  we  paid  him.  lie  said  yes — for  ten  francs.  We  ac 
cepted  the  contract,  and  said— 

"  Xow  persuade  your  vassals  to  fall  back." 

He  swung  his  long  staff  round  his  head  and  three  Arabs 
bit  the  dust.  lie  capered  among  the  mob  like  a  very  maniac. 
His  blows  fell  like  hail,  and  wherever  one  fell  a  subject 
went  down.  We  had  to  hurry  to  the  rescue  and  tell  him 
it  was  only 
necessary  to 
damage  them  a 
little,  he  need 
not  kill  them. — 
In  two  minutes 
we  were  alone 
with  the  sheik, 
and  remained 
so.  The  per 
suasive  powers 
of  this  illiter 
ate  savage 
were  remark 
able. 

Each  side  of  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops  is  about  as  long  as  the 
Capitol  at  Washington,  or  the  Sultan's  new  palace  on  the  Bos 
porus,  and  is  longer  than  the  greatest  depth  of  St.  Peter's  at 
Rome — which  is  to  say  that  each  side  of  Cheops  extends  seven 
hundred  and  some  odd  feet  It  is  about  seventy-five  feet 
higher  than  the  cross  on  St.  Peter's.  The  first  time  I  ever 
went  down  the  Mississippi,  I  thought  the  highest  bluff  on  the 
river  between  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans — it  was  near  Selma, 
Missouri — was  probably  the  highest  mountain  in  the  world. 
It  is  four  hundred  and  thirteen  feet  high.  It  still  looms  in  my 
memory  with  nndiminished  grandeur.  I  can  still  see  the  trees 
and  bushes  growing  smaller  and  smaller  as  I  followed  them  up 
its  huge  slant  with  my  eye,  till  they  became  a  feathery  fringe 
on  the  distant  summit.  This  symmetrical  Pyramid  of  Cheops 


A  POWERFUL   ARGUMENT. 


628  YOUTHFUL     REMINISCENCES. 

— this  solid  mountain  of  stone  reared  by  the  patient  hands  of 
men — this  mighty  tomb  of  a  forgotten  monarch — dwarfs  my 
cherished  mountain.  For  it  is  four  hundred  and  eighty  feet 
high.  In  still  earlier  years  than  those  I  have  been  recalling, 
Holliday's  Hill,  in  our  town,  was  to  me  the  noblest'  work  of 
God.  It  appeared  to  pierce  the  skies.  It  was  nearly  three 
hundred  feet  high.  In  those  days  I  pondered  the  subject 
much,  but  I  never  could  understand  why  it  did  not  swathe  its 
summit  with  never-failing  clouds,  and  crown  its  majestic  brow 
with  everlasting  snows.  I  had  heard  that  such  was  the  custom 
of  great  mountains  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  I  remembered 
how  I  worked  with  another  boy,  at  odd  afternoons  stolen  from 
study  and  paid  for  with  stripes,  to  undermine  and  start  from  its 
bed  an  immense  boulder  that  rested  upon  the  edge  of  that  hill 
top  ;  I  remembered  how,  one  Saturday  afternoon,  we  o;ave 
three  hours  of  honest  effort  to  the  task,  and  saw  at  last  that  our 
reward  was  at  hand ;  I  remembered  how  wre  sat  down,  then,  and 
wiped  the  perspiration  away,  and  waited  to  let  a  picnic  party 
get  out  of  the  way  in  the  road  below — and  then  we  started  the 
boulder.  It  was  splendid.  It  went  crashing  down  the  hill 
side,  tearing  iip  saplings,  mowing  bushes  down  like  grass, 
ripping  and  crushing  and  smashing  every  thing  in  its  path — 
eternally  splintered  and  scattered  a  wood  pile  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill,  and  then  sprang  from  the  high  bank  clear  over  a  dray  in 
the  road — the  negro  glanced  up  once  and  dodged — and  the  next 
second  it  made  infinitesimal  mince-meat  of  a  frame  cooper-shop, 
and  the  coopers  swarmed  out  like  bees.  Then  we  said  it  wras 
perfectly  magnificent,  and  left.  Because  the  coopers  wrere 
starting  up  the  hill  to  inquire. 

Still,  that  mountain,  prodigious  as  it  was,  was  nothing  to  the 
Pyramid  of  Cheops.  I  could  conjure  up  no  comparison  that 
would  convey  to  my  mind  a  satisfactory  comprehension  of  the 
magnitude  of  a  pile  of  monstrous  stones  that  covered  thirteen 
acres  of  ground  and  stretched  upward  four  hundred  and  eighty 
tiresome  feet,  and  so  I  gave  it  up  and  walked  dowrn  to  the 
Sphynx.  v 

After  years  of  waiting,  it  was  before  me  at  last.     The  great 


THE     MAJESTIC     SPHYNX.  629 

face  was  so  sad,  so  earnest,  so  longing,  so  patient.  There  was 
a  dignity  not  of  earth  in  its  mien,  and  in  its  countenance  a  be 
nignity  such  as  never  any  thing  human  wore.  It  was  stone, 
but  it  seemed  sentient.  If  ever  image  of  stone  thought,  it  was 
thinking.  It  was  looking  toward  the  verge  of  the  landscape, 
yet  looking  at  nothing — nothing  but  distance  and  vacancy.  It 
was  looking  over  and  beyond  every  thing  of  the  present,  and 
far  into  the  past.  It  was  gazing  out  over  the  ocean  of  Time — 
over  lines  of  ^century-waves  which,  further  and  further  reced 
ing,  closed  nearer  and  nearer  together,  and  blended  at  last  into 
one  unbroken  tide,  away  toward  the  horizon  of  remote  anti 
quity.  It  was  thinking  of  the  wars  of  departed  ages  ;  of  the 
empires  it  had  seen  created  and  destroyed ;  of  the  nations 
whose  birth  it  had  witnessed,  whose  progress  it  had  watched, 
whose  annihilation  it  had  noted ;  of  the  joy  and  sorrow,  the 
life  and  death,  the  grandeur  and  decay,  of  five  thousand  slow 
revolving  years.  It  was  the  type  of  an  attribute  of  man — of  a 
faculty  of  his  heart  and  brain.  It  was  MEMOKY — RETROSPEC 
TION — wrought  into  visible,  tangible  form.  All  who  know 
what  pathos  there  is  in  memories  of  days  that  are  accomplished 
and  faces  that  have  vanished — albeit  only  a  trifling  score  of 
years  gone  by — will  have  some  appreciation  of  the  pathos  that 
dwells  in  these  grave  eyes  that  look  so  steadfastly  back  upon 
ttye  things  they  knew  before  History  was  born — before  Tradi 
tion  had  being — things  that  were,  and  forms  that  moved,  in  a 
vague  era  which  even  Poetry  and  Romance  scarce  know  of — and 
passed  one  by  one  away  and  left  the  stony  dreamer  solitary  in 
the  midst  of  a  strange  new  age,  and  uncomprehended  scenes. 

The  Sphynx  is  grand  in  its  loneliness  ;  it  is  imposing  in  its 
magnitude  ;  it  is  impressive  in  the  mystery  that  hangs  over  its 
story.  And  there  is  that  in  the  overshadowing  majesty  of  this 
eternal  figure  of  stone,  with  its  accusing  memory  of  the  deeds 
of  all  ages,  which  reveals  to  one  something  of  what  he  shall 
feel  when  he  shall  stand  at  last  in  the  awful  presence  of  God. 

There  are  some  things  which,  for  the  credit  of  America, 
should  be  left  unsaid,  perhaps  ;  but  these  very  things  happen 
sometimes  to  be  the  very  things  which,  for  the  real  benefit  of 


630 


THE     MAJESTIC     SPHYNX. 


Americans,  ought  to  have  prominent  notice.  While  we  stood 
looking,  a  wart,  or  an  excrescence  of  some  kind,  appeared  on  the 
jaw  of  the  Sphynx.  We  heard  the  familiar  clink  of  a  hammer, 

and  understood 
the  case  at  once. 
One  of  our  well- 
meaning  reptiles 
— I  mean  relic- 
h  u  n  t  e  r  s  —  h  a  d 
crawled  up  there 
and  was  trying  to 
break  a  "  speci 
men  "  from  the 
face  of  this  the 
most  majestic  cre 
ation  the  hand  of 
man  has  wrought. 
But  the  great  im 
age  contemplated 
the  dead  ages  as 


THE   RELIC-HUNTER. 


calmly 


as    ever. 


unconscious       of 

the  small  insect  that  was  fretting  at  its  jaw.  Egyptian  granite 
that  has  defied  the  storms  and  earthquakes  of  all  time  has 
nothing  to  fear  from  the  tack-hammers  of  ignorant  excursion 
ists — highwaymen  like  this  specimen.  He  failed  in  his  en 
terprise.  .We  sent  a  sheik  to  arrest  him  if  he  had  the 
authority,  or  to  warn  him,  if  he  had  not,  that  by  the  laws  of 
Egypt  the  crime  he  was  attempting  to  commit  was  punishable 
with  imprisonment  or  the  bastinado.  Then  he  desisted  and 
went  away. 

The  Sphynx  :  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet  long,  sixty  feet 
high,  and  a  hundred  and  two  feet  around  the  head,  if  I  remember 
rightly — carved  out  of  one  solid  block  of  stone  harder  than  any 
iron.  The  block  must  have  been  as  large  as  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  before  the  usual  waste  (by  the  necessities  of  sculpture)  of  a 
fourth  or  a  half  of  the  original  mass  was  begun.  I  only  set 


THINGS     I     SHALL     NOT    TELL. 


631 


down  these  figures  and  these  remarks  to  suggest  the  prodigious 
labor  the  carving  of  it  so  elegantly,  so  symmetrically,  so  fault 
lessly,  must  have  cost.  This  species  of  stone  is  so  hard  that  fig 
ures  cut  in  it  remain  sharp  and  unmarred  after  exposure  to  the 
weather  for  two  or  three  thousand  years.  Now  did  it  take  a 
hundred  years  of  patient  toil  to  carve  the  Sphynx  ?  It  seems 
probable. 

Something  interfered,  and  we  did  not  visit  the  Red  Sea  and 
walk  upon  the  sands  of  Arabia.  I  shall  not  describe  the  great 
mosque  of  Mehemet  Ali,  whose  entire  inner  walls  are  built  of 
polished  and  glistening  alabaster  ;  I  shall  not  tell  how  the  lit 
tle  birds  have  built  their  nests  in  the  globes  of  the  great  chan 
deliers  that  hang  in  the 
mosque,  and  how  they  fill 
the  whole  place  with  their 
music  and'  are  not  afraid 
of  any  body  because  their 
audacity  is  pardoned,  their 
rights  are  respected,  and 
nobody  is  allowed  to  inter 
fere  with  them,  even 
though  the  mosque  be  thus 
doomed  to  go  unlighted ;  I 
certainly  shall  not  tell  the 
hackneyed  story  of  the 
massacre  of  the  Mame 
luke's,  because  I  am  glad 
the  lawless  rascals  were 
massacred,  and  I  do  not 
wish  to*  get  up  any  sympa 
thy  in  their  behalf;  I  shall 
not  tell  how  that  one  soli 
tary  Mameluke  jumped  his  horse  a  hundred  feet  down  from 
the  battlements  of  the  citadel  and  escaped,  because  I  do 
not  think  much  of  that — I  could  have  done  it  myself;  I  shall 
not  tell  of  Joseph's  well  which  he  dug  in  the  solid  rock  of  the 
citadel  hill  and  which  is  still  as  good  as  new,  nor  how  the 


THE   MAMELUKES    LEAP. 


632  THINGS     I     SHALL    NOT     TELL. 

same  mules  lie  bought  to  draw  up  the  water  (with  an  endless 
chain)  are  still  at  it  yet  and  are  getting  tired  of  it,  too  ;  I  shall 
not  tell  about  Joseph's  granaries  which  he  built  to  store  the 
grain  in,  what  time  the  Egyptian  brokers  were  "  selling  short," 
unwitting  that  there  would  be  no  corn  in  all  the  land  when 
it  should  be  time  for  them  to  deliver ;  I  shall  not  tell  any  thing 
about  the  strange,  strange  city  of  Cairo,  because  it  is  only  a  re 
petition,  a  good  deal  intensified  and  exaggerated,  of  the  Orien 
tal  cities  I  have  already  spoken  of;  I  shall  not  tell  of  the  Great 
Caravan  which  leaves  for  Mecca  every  year,  for  I  did  not  see 
it ;  nor  of  the  fashion  the  people  have  of  prostrating  them 
selves  and  so  forming  a  long  human  pavement  to  be  ridden 
over  by  the  chief  of  the  expedition  on  its  return,  to  the  end 
that  their  salvation  may  be  thus  secured,  for  I  did  not  see  that 
either  ;  I  shall  not  speak  of  the  railway,  for  it  is  like  any  other 
railway — I  shall  only  say  that  the  fuel  they  use  for  the  loco 
motive  is  composed  of  mummies  three  thousand  years  old,  pur 
chased  by  the  ton  or  by  the  graveyard  for  that  purpose,  and 
that  sometimes  one  hears  the  profane  engineer  call  out  pettish 
ly,  "D — n  these  plebeians,  they  don't  burn  worth  a  cent — pass 
out  a  King  ;"*  I  shall  not  tell  of  the  groups  of  mud  cones 
stuck  like  wasps'  nests  upon  a  thousand  mounds  above  high 
water-mark  the  length  and  breadth  of  Egypt — villages  of  the 
lower  classes  ;  I  shall  not  speak  of  the  boundless  sweep  of  level 
plain,  green  with  luxuriant  grain,  that  gladdens  the  eye  as  far 
as  it  can  pierce  through  the  soft,  rich  atmosphere  of  Egypt ;  I 
shall  not  speak  of  the  vision  of  the  Pyramids  seen  at  a  distance 
of  five  and  twenty  miles,  for  the  picture  is  too  ethereal  to  be 
limned  by  an  uninspired  pen ;  I  shall  not  tell  of  the  crowds  of 
dusky  women  who  flocked  to  the  cars  when  they  stopped  a 
moment  at  a  station,  to  sell  us  a  drink  of  water  or  a  ruddy, 
juicy  pomegranate  ;  I  shall  not  tell  of  the  motley  multitudes 
and  wild  costumes  that  graced  a  fair  we  found  in  full  blast  at 
another  barbarous  station  ;  I  shall  not  tell  how  we  feasted  on 
fresh  dates  and  enjoyed  the  pleasant  landscape  all  through  the 

*  Stated  to  me  for  a  fact.     I  only  tell  it  as  I  got  it.     I  am  willing  to  believe  it 
I  can  believe  any  thing. 


GRAND     OLD     EGYPT. 


633 


flying  journey  ;  nor  how  we  thundered  into  Alexandria,  at 
last,  swarmed  out  of  the  cars,  rowed  aboard  the  ship,  left  a 
comrade  behind,  (who  was  to  return  to  Europe,  thence  home,) 
raised  the  anchor,  and  turned  our  bows  homeward  finally  and 
forever  from  the  long  voyage  ;  nor  how,  as  the  mellow  sun  went 
down  upon  the  oldest  land  on  earth,  Jack  and  Moult  assem 
bled  in  solemn  state  in  the  smoking-room  and  mourned  over 
the  lost  comrade  the  whole  night  long,  and  would  not  be  com 
forted.  I  shall  not  speak  a  word  of  any  of  these  things,  or  write 
a  line.  They  shall  be  as  a  sealed  book.  I  do  not  know  what  a 
sealed  book  is,  because  I  never  saw  one,  but  a  sealed  book  is  the 
expression  to  use  in  this  connection,  because  it  is  popular. 

We  were  glad  to  have  seen  the  land  which  was  the  mother 
of  civilization  —  which  taught  Greece  her  letters,  and  through 

,  Greece  Rome,  and  through 
Rome  the  world  ;  the  land 
which  could  have  human 
ized  and  civilized  the  hap 
less  children  of  Israel,,  but 
allowed  them  to  depart  out 
of  her  borders  little  better 
than  savages.  We  were  glad 
to  have  seen  that  land  which 
had  an  enlightened  religion 
with  future  eternal  rewards 
and  punishment  in  it,  while 
even  Israel's  religion  con 
tained  no  promise  of  a  here 
after.  We  were  glad  to  have 
seen  that  land  which  had 
glass  three  thousand  years  before  Eng 
land  had  it,  and  could  paint  upon  it  as 
none  of  us  can  paint  now  ;  that  land 

wllich      kn6W>      tllrG6 


WOULD    NOT   BE   COMFORTED. 


ago,  well  nigh  all  of  medicine  and 
surgery  which  science  has  discovered  lately;  which  had  all 
those  curious  surgical  instruments  which  science  has  invented 


634 


GRAND     OLD    EGYPT. 


recently ;  which  had  in  high  excellence  a  thousand  luxuries 
and  necessities  of  an  advanced  civilization  which  we  have 
gradually  contrived  and  accumulated  in  modern  times  and 
claimed  as  things  that  were  new  under  the  sun;  that  had 
paper  untold  centuries  before  we  dreampt  of  it — and  water 
falls  before  our  women  thought  of  them ;  that  had  a  perfect 
system  of  common  schools  so  long  before  we  boasted  of  our 
achievements  in  that  direction  that  it  seems  forever  and  forever 
ago ;  that  so  embalmed  the  dead  that  flesh  was  made  almost  im 
mortal — which  we  can  not  do  ;  that  built  temples  which  rnock 
at  destroying  time  and  smile  grimly  upon  our  lauded  little  pro 
digies  of  architecture  ;  that  old  land  that  knew  all  which  we 

O  ' 

know  now,  perchance,  and  more ;  that  walked  in  the  broad 
highway  of  civilization  in  the  gray  dawn  of  creation,  ages  and 
ages  before  we  were  born  ;  that  left  the  impress  of  exalted,  cul 
tivated  Mind  upon  the  eternal  front  of  the  Sphynx  to  confound 
all  scoffers  who,  when  all  her  other  proofs  had  passed  away, 
might  seek  to  persuade  the  world  that  imperial  Egypt,  in  the 
days  of  her  high  renown,  had  groped  in  darkness. 


CHAPTEE   LIX. 


~TT~TE  were  at  sea  now,  for  a  very  long  voyage — we  were  to 

V  V      pass  through  the  entire  length  of  the  Levant ;  through 

the  entire  length  of  the  Mediterranean  proper,  also,  and  then 

cross  the  full  width  of  the  Atlantic — a  voyage  of  several  weeks. 


HOMEWARD   BOUND. 


We  naturally  settled  down  into  a  very  slow,  stay-at-home  man 
ner  of  life,  and  resolved  to  be  quiet,  exemplary  people,  and 
roam  no  more  for  twenty  or  thirty  days.  No  more,  at  least, 
than  from  stem  to  stern  of  the  ship.  It  was  a  very  comfort 
able  prospect,  though,  for  we  were  tired  and  needed  a  long 
rest. 


636  NOTE-BOOKS    AT    SEA. 

We  were  all  lazy  and  satisfied,  now,  as  the  meager  entries 
in  my  note-book  (that  sure  index,  to  me,  of  my  condition,) 
prove.  What  a  stupid  thing  a  note-book  gets  to  be  at  sea,  any 
way.  Please  observe  the  style  : 

"  Sunday — Services,  as  usual,  at  four  bells.     Services  at  night,  also.     No    cards. 

"  Monday — Beautiful  day,  but  rained  hard.  The  cattle  purchased  at  Alexandria 
for  beef  ought  to  be  shingled.  Or  else  fattened.  The  water  stands  in  deep  pud 
dles  in  the  depressions  forward  of  their  after  shoulders.  Also  here  and  there  all 
over  their  backs.  It  is  well  they  are  not  cows — it  would  soak  in  and  ruin  the 
milk.  The  poor  devil  eagle*  from  Syria  looks  miserable  and  droopy  in  the  rain, 
perched  on  the  forward  capstan.  He  appears  to  have  his  own  opinion  of  a  sea 
voyage,  and  if  it  were  put  into  language  and  the  language  solidified,  it  would  prob 
ably  essentially  dam  the  widest  river  in  the  world. 

"  Tuesday — Somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  island  of  Malta,  Can  not  stop 
there.  Cholera.  Weather  very  stormy.  Many  passengers  seasick  and  invisible. 

"  Wednesday — Weather  still  very  savage.  Storm  blew  two  land  birds  to  sea,  and 
they  came  on  board.  A  hawk  was  blown  off,  also.  He  circled  round  and  round 
the  ship,  wanting  to  light,  but  afraid  of  the  people.  He  was  so  tired,  though,  that 
he  had  to  light,  at  last,  or  perish.  He  stopped  in  the  foretop,  repeatedly,  and  was 
as  often  blown  away  by  the  wind.  At  last  Harry  caught  him.  Sea  full  of  %ing- 
fish.  They  rise  in  flocks  of  three  hundred  and  flash  along  above  the  tops  of  the 
waves  a  distance  of  two  or  three  hundred  feet,  then  fall  and  disappear. 

"  Thursday — Anchored  off  Algiers,  Africa.  Beautiful  city,  beautiful  green  hilly 
landscape  behind  it.  Staid  half  a  day  and  left.  Not  permitted  to  land,  though  we 
showed  a  clean  bill  of  health.  They  were  afraid  of  Egyptian  plague  and  cholera. 

"Friday — Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes.  Evening,  promenading 
the  deck.  Afterwards,  charades. 

"  Saturday — Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes.  Evening,  promenading 
the  decks.  Afterwards,  dominoes. 

"  Sunday — Morning  service,  four  bells.  Evening  service,  eight  bells.  Monotony 
till  midnight. — Whereupon,  dominoes. 

"Monday — Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes.  Evening,  promenading 
the  decks.  Afterward,  charades  and  a  lecture  from  Dr.  C.  Dominoes. 

"  No  date — Anchored  off'  the  picturesque  city  of  Cagliari,  Sardinia.  Staid  till 
midnight,  but  not  permitted  to  land  by  these  infamous  foreigners.  They  smell  in- 
odorously — they  do  not  wash — they  dare  not  risk  cholera. 

"  Thursday — Anchored  off  the  beautiful  cathedral  city  of  Malaga,  Spain. — Went 
ashore  in  the  captain's  boat — not  ashore,  either,  for  they  would  not  let  us  land. 
Quarantine.  Shipped  my  newspaper  correspondence,  which  they  took  with  tongs, 
dipped  it  in  sea  water,  clipped  it  full  of  holes,  and  then  fumigated  it  with  vil 
lainous  vapors  till  it  smelt  like  a  Spaniard.  Inquired  about  chances  to  run  the 
blockade  and  visit  the  Alhambra  at  Granada.  Too  risky — they  might  hang  a 
body.  Set  sail — middle  of  afternoon. 

*  Afterwards  presented  to  the  Central  Park. 


A    BOY'S    DIARY.  637 

"  And  so  on,  and  so  on,  and  so  forth,  for  several  days.  Finally,  anchored  off 
Gibraltar,  which  looks  familiar  and  home-like." 

It  reminds  me  of  the  journal  I  opened  with  the  New  Year, 
once,  when  I  was  a  boy  and  a  confiding  and  a  willing  prey  to 
those  impossible  schemes  of  reform  which  well-meaning  old 
maids  and  grandmothers  set  for  the  feet  of  unwary  youths  at 
that  season  of  the  year — setting  oversized  tasks  for  them, 
which,  necessarily  failing,  as  infallibly  weaken  the  boy's 
strength  of  will,  diminish  his  confidence  in  himself  and  injure 
his  chances  of  success  in  life.  Please  accept  of  an  extract : 

"  Monday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"  Tuesday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"  Wednesday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"  Thursday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"  Friday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"  Next  Friday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

11  Friday  fortnight — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

"Following  month — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed." 

I  stopped,  then,  discouraged.  Startling  events  appeared  to 
be  too  rare,  in  my  career,  to  render  a  diary  necessary.  I  still 
reflect  with  pride,  however,  that  even  at  that  early  age  I 
washed  when  I  got  up.  That  journal  finished  me.  I  never 
have  had  the  nerve  to  keep  one  since.  My  loss  of  confidence 
in  myself  in  that  line  was  permanent. 

The  ship  had  to  stay  a  week  or  more  at  Gibraltar  to  take  in 
coal  for  the  home  voyage. 

It  would  be  very  tiresome  staying  here,  and  so  four  of  us 
ran  the  quarantine  blockade  and  spent  seven  delightful  days 
in  Seville,  Cordova,  Cadiz,  and  wandering  through  the  pleas 
ant  rural  scenery  of  Andalusia,  the  garden  of  Old  Spain. 
The  experiences  of  that  cheery  week  were  too  varied  and  nu 
merous  for  a  short  chapter  and  I  have  not  room  for  a  long  one. 
Therefore  I  shall  leave  them  all  out. 


CHAPTEE  LX. 

TJZN  or  eleven  o'clock  found  us  coming  down  to  breakfast 
one  morning  in  Cadiz.  They  told  us  the  ship  had  been 
lying  at  anchor  in  the  harbor  two  or  three  hours.  It  was  time 
for  us  to  bestir  ourselves.  The  ship  could  wait  only  a  little 
while  because  of  the  quarantine.  We  were  soon  on  board,  and 
within  the  hour  the  white  city  and  the  pleasant  shores  of  Spain 
sank  down  behind  the  waves  and  passed  out  of  sight.  "We  had 
seen  no  land  fade  from  view  so  regretfully. 

It  had  long  ago  been  decided  in  a  noisy  public  meeting  in 
the  main  cabin  that  we  could  not  go  to  Lisbon,  because  we 
must  surely  be  quarantined  there.  We  did  every  thing  by 
mass-meeting,  in  the  good  old  national  way,  from  swapping  off 
one  empire  for  another  on  the  programme  of  the  voyage  down 
to  complaining  of  the  cookery  and  the  scarcity  of  napkins.  I 
am  reminded,  now,  of  one  of  these  complaints  of  the  cookery 
made  by  a  passenger.  The  coffee  had  been  steadily  growing 
more  and  more  execrable  for  the  space  of  three  weeks,  till  at 
last  it  had  ceased  to  be  coffee  altogether  and  had  assumed  the 
nature  of  mere  discolored  water — so  this  person  said.  He  said 
it  was  so  weak  that  it  was  transparent  an  inch  in  depth  around 
the  edge  of  the  cup.  As  he  approached  the  table  one  morning 
he  saw  the  transparent  edge — by  means  of  his  extraordinary 
vision — long  before  he  got  to  his  seat.  He  went  back  and 
complained  in  a  high-handed  way  to  Capt.  Duncan.  He  said 
the  coffee  was  disgraceful.  The  Captain  showed  his.  It  seemed 
tolerably  good.  The  incipient  mutineer  was  more  outraged 
than  ever,  then,  at  what  he  denounced  as  the  partiality  shown 


GLIMPSE     OF     MADEIRA. 


639 


the  captain's  table  over  the  other  tables  in  the  ship.  He 
flourished  back  and  got  his  cup  and  set  it  down  triumphantly, 
and  said : 

"  Just  try  that  mixture  once,  Captain  Duncan." 

He  smelt  it — tasted  it — smiled  benign  an  tly — then  said : 

"  It  is  inferior — for  coffee — but  it  is  pretty  fair  tea." 

The  humbled 
mutineer  smelt 
it,  tasted  it,  and 
returned  to  his 
seat.  He  had 
made  an  egre 
gious  ass  of  him 
self  before  the 
whole  ship.  He 
did  it  no  more. 
After  that  he 
took  things  as 
they  came.  That 
was  me. 

The  old-fash 
ioned  ship-life  COFFEE- 
had  returned,  now  that  we  were  no  longer  in  sight  of  land.  For 
days  and  days  it  continued  just  the  same,  one  day  being  ex 
actly  like  another,  and,  to  me,  every  one  of  them  pleasant. 
At  last  we  anchored  in  the  open  roadstead  of  Funchal,  in  the 
beautiful  islands  we  call  the  Madeiras. 

The  mountains  looked  surpassingly  lovely,  clad  as  they  were 
in  living  green  ;  ribbed  with  lava  ridges  ;  flecked  with  white 
cottages  ;  riven  by  deep  chasms  purple  with  shade  ;  the  great 
slopes  dashed  with  sunshine  and  mottled  with  shadows  flung 
from  the  drifting  squadrons  of  the  sky,  and  the  superb  picture 
fitly  crowned  by  towering  peaks  whose  fronts  were  swept  by 
the  trailing  fringes  of  the  clouds*. 

But  we  could  not  land.  We  staid  all  day  and  looked,  we 
abused  the  man  who  invented  quarantine,  we  held  half  a  dozen 
mass-meetings  and  crammed  them  full  of  interrupted  speeches, 


640 


THE     PLEASANT    BERMUDAS. 


motions  that  fell  still-born,  amendments  that  came  to  nought 
and  resolutions  that  died  from  sheer  exhaustion  in  trying  to 
get  before  the  house.  At  night  we  set  sail. 

We  averaged  four  mass-meetings  a  week  for  the  voyage — 
we  seemed  always  in  labor  in  this  way,  and  yet  so  often  falla 
ciously  that  whenever  at  long  intervals  we  were  safely  deliv 
ered  of  a  resolution,  it  was  cause  for  public  rejoicing,  and  we 
hoisted  the  flag  and  fired  a  salute. 

Days  passed — and  nights  ;  and  then  the  beautiful  Bermudas 


"OUR   FRIENDS,    THE   BERMUDIANS." 

rose  out  of  the  sea,  we  entered  the  tortuous  channel,  steamed 
hither  and  thither  among  the  bright  summer  islands,  and  rested 
at  last  under  the  flag  of  England  and  were  welcome.  We  were 
not  a  nightmare  here,  where  Vere  civilization  and  intelligence 
in  place  of  Spanish  and  Italian  superstition,  dirt  and  dread  of 
cholera.  A  few  days  among  the  breezy  groves,  the  flower  gar- 


OUR     FIRST    ACCIDENT. 


6-il 


dens,  the  coral  caves,  and  the  lovely  vistas  of  blue  water  that 
went  curving  in  and  out,  disappearing  and  anon  again  appear 
ing  through  jungle  walls  of  brilliant  foliage,  restored  the  ener 
gies  dulled  by  long  drowsing  on  the  ocean,  and  fitted  us  for  our 
final  cruise — our  little  run  of  a  thousand  miles  to  New  York 
—America — HOME. 

We  bade  good-bye  to  "  our  friends  the  Bermudians,"  as  our 
programme  hath  it — the  majority  of  those  we  were  most  inti 
mate  with  were  negroes — and  courted  the  great  deep  again. 
I  said  the  majority.  We  knew  more  negroes  than  white  peo 
ple,  because  wre  had  a  deal  of  washing  to  be  done,  but  we  made 
some  most  excellent  friends  among  the  whites,  whom  it  will  be 
a  pleasant  duty  to  hold  long  in  grateful  remembrance. 

We  sailed,  and  from  that  hour  all  idling  ceased.  Such  an 
other  system  of  overhauling,  general  littering  of  cabins  and 
packing  of  trunks  we 
had  not  seen  since  we 
let  go  the  anchor  in  the 
harbor  of  Beirout.  Ev 
ery  body  was  busy.  Lists 
of  all  purchases  had  to 
be  made  out,  and  values 
attached,  to  facilitate 
matters  at  the  custom 
house.  Purchases  bought 
by  bulk  in  partnership 
had  to  be  equitably  di 
vided,  outstanding  debts 
canceled,  accounts  com 
pared,  and  trunks,  boxes 
and  packages  labeled. 
All  day  long  the  bustle 
and  confusion  continued. 

And  now  came  our  first  accident.  A  passenger  was  running 
through  a  gangway,  between  decks,  one  stormy  night,  when 
he  caught  his  foot  in  the  iron  staple  of  a  door  that  had  been 
heedlessly  left  off  a  hatchway,  and  the  bones  of  his  leg  broke 

41 


CAPT.   DUNCAN. 


642  AT    HOME. 

at  the  ancle.  It  was  our  first  serious  misfortune.  We  had 
traveled  much  more  than  twenty  thousand  miles,  by  land  and 
sea,  in  many  trying  climates,  without  a  single  hurt,  without  a 
serious  case  of  sickness  and  without  a  death  among  five  and 
sixty  passengers.  Our  good  fortune  had  been  wonderful.  A 
sailor  had  jumped  overboard  at  Constantinople  one  night,  and 
was  seen  no  more,  but  it  was  suspected  that  his  object  was  to 
desert,  and  there  was  a  slim  chance,  at  least,  that  he  reached 
the  shore.  But  the  passenger  list  was  complete.  There  was 
no  name  missing  from  the  register. 

At  last,  one  pleasant  morning,  we  steamed  up  the  harbor 
of  New  York,  all  on  deck,  all  dressed  in  Christian  garb — by 
special  order,  for  there  was  a  latent  disposition  in  some  quar 
ters  to  come  out  as  Turks — and  amid  a  waving  of  handker 
chiefs  from  welcoming  friends,  the  glad  pilgrims  noted  the 
shiver  of  the  decks  that  told  that  ship  and  pier  had  joined 
hands  again  and  the  long,  strange  cruise  was  over.  Amen. 


CHAPTER  LXI. 

~TX  this  place  I  will  print  an  article  which  I  wrote  for  the 
-*-  New  York  Herald  the  night  we  arrived.  I  do  it  partly 
because  my  contract  with  my  publishers  makes  it  compulsory ; 
partly  because  it  is  a  proper,  tolerably  accurate,  and  exhaust 
ive  summing  up  of  the  cruise  of  the  ship  and  the  performances 
of  the  pilgrims  in  foreign  lands ;  and  partly  because  some  of 
the  passengers  have  abused  me  for  writing  it,  and  I  wish  the 
public  to  see  how  thankless  a  task  it  is  to  put  one's  self  to  trouble 
to  glorify  un appreciative  people.  I  was  charged  with  "  rush 
ing  into  print "  with  these  compliments.  I  did  not  rush.  I 
had  written  news  letters  to  the  Herald  sometimes,  but  yet  when 
I  visited  the  office  that  day  I  did  not  say  any  thing  about 
writing  a  valedictory.  I  did  go  to  the  Tribune  office  to  see  if 
such  an  article  was  wanted,  because  I  belonged  on  the  regular 
staff  of  that  paper  and  it  was  simply  a  duty  to  do  it.  The 
managing  editor  was  absent,  and  so  I  thought  no  more  about 
it.  At  night  when  the  Herald }s  request  came  for  an  article,  I 
did  not  "  rush."  In  fact,  I  demurred  for  a  while,  because  I 
did  not  feel  like  writing  compliments  then,  and  therefore  was 
afraid  to  speak  of  the  cruise  lest  I  might  be  betrayed  into 
using  other  than  complimentary  language.  However,  I  re 
flected  that  it  would  be  a  just  and  righteous  thing  to  go  down 
and  write  a  kind  word  for  the  Hadjis — Hadjis  are  people  who 
have  made  the  pilgrimage — because  parties  not  interested 
could  not  do  it  so  feelingly  as  I,  a  fellow-Hadji,  and  so  I  penned 
the  valedictory.  I  have  read  it,  and  read  it  again ;  and  if 
there  is  a  sentence  in  it  that  is  not  fulsomely  complimentary  to 


644  AN    OBITUARY. 

captain,  ship  and  passengers,  /can  not  find  it.  If  it  is  not  a 
chapter  that  any  company  might  be  proud  to  have  a  body 
write  about  them,  my  judgment  is  fit  for  nothing.  "With  these 
remarks  I  confidently  submit  it  to  the  unprejudiced  judgment 
of  the  reader : 


EETUEN    OF    THE    HOLY    LAND    EXCURSIONISTS THE    STOKY    OF    THE 

CKUISE. 

To  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  HERALD: 

The  steamer  Quaker  City  has  accomplished  at  last  her  extraordinary  voyage 
and  returned  to  her  old  pier  at  the  foot  of  "Wall  street.  The  expedition  was  a  suc 
cess  in  some  respects,  in  some  it  was  not.  Originally  it  was  advertised  as  a  "  pleas 
ure  excursion."  Well,  perhaps,  it  was  a  pleasure  excursion,  but  certainly  it  did 
not  look  like  one ;  certainly  it  did  not  act  like  one.  Any  body's  and  every  body's 
notion  of  a  pleasure  excursion  is  that  the  parties  to  it  will  of  a  necessity  be  young 
and  giddy  and  somewhat  boisterous.  They  will  dance  a  good  deal,  sing  a  good 
deal,  make  love,  but  sermonize  very  little.  Any  body's  and  every  body's  notion  of 
a  well  conducted  funeral  is  that  there  must  be  a  hearse  and  a  corpse,  and  chief 
mourners  and  mourners  by  courtesy,  many  old  people,  much  solemnity,  no  levity, 
and  a  prayer  and  a  sermon  withal.  Three-fourths  of  the  Quaker  City's  passengers 
were  between  forty  and  seventy  years  of  age !  There  was  a  picnic  crowd  for  you  I 
It  may  be  supposed  that  the  other  fourth  was  composed  of  young  girls.  But  it 
was  not.  It  was  chiefly  composed  of  rusty  old  bachelors  and  a  child  of  six  years. 
Let  us  average  the  ages  of  the  Quaker  City's  pilgrims  and  set  the  figure  down  as 
fifty  years.  Is  any  man  insane  enough  to  imagine  that  this  picnic  of  patriarchs 
sang,  made  love,  danced,  laughed,  told  anecdotes,  dealt  in  ungodly  levity  ?  In  my 
experience  they  sinned  little  in  these  matters.  No  doubt  it  was  presumed  here  at 
home  that  these  frolicsome  veterans  laughed  and  sang  and  romped  all  day,  and  day 
after  day,  and  kept  up  a  noisy  excitement  from  one  end  of  the  ship  to  the  other; 
and  that  they  played  blind-man's  buff  or  danced  quadrilles  and  waltzes  on  moon 
light  evenings  on  the  quarter-deck  ;  and  that  at  odd  moments  of  unoccupied  time 
they  jotted  a  laconic  item  or  two  in  the  journals  they  opened  on  such  an  elaborate 
plan  when  they  left  home,  and  then  skurried  off  to  their  whist  and  euchre  labors 
under  the  cabin  lamps.  If  these  things  were  presumed,  the  presumption  was  at 
fault.  The  venerable  excursionists  were  not  gay  and  frisky.  They  played  no 
blind-man's  buff;  they  dealt  not  in  whist;  they  shirked  not  the  irksome  journal, 
for  alas !  most  of  them  were  even  writing  books.  They  never  romped,  they  talked 
but  little,  they  never  sang,  save  in  the  nightly  prayer-meeting.  The  pleasure  ship 
was  a  synagogue,  and  the  pleasure  trip  was  a  funeral  excursion  without  a  corpse. 
(There  is  nothing  exhilarating  about  a  funeral  excursion  without  a  corpse.)  A  free, 
hearty  laugh  was  a  sound  that  was  not  heard  oftener  than  once  in  seven  days  about 
those  decks  or  in  those  cabins,  and  when  it  was  heard  it  met  with  precious  little 
sympathy.  The  excursionists  danced,  on  three  separate  evenings,  long,  long  ago, 


AN     OBITUARY.  645 

(it  seems  an  age.)  quadrilles,  of  a  single  set,  made  up  of  three  ladies  and  five  gen 
tlemen,  (the  latter  with  handkerchiefs  around  their  arms  to  signify  their  sex.)  who 
timed  their  feet  to  the  solemn  wheezing  of  a  melodeon ;  but  even  this  melancholy 
orgie  was  voted  to  be  sinful,  and  dancing  was  discontinued. 

The  pilgrims  played  dominoes  when  too  much  Josephus  or  Robinson's  Holy 
Land  Researches,  or  book-writing,  made  recreation  necessary — for  dominoes  is 
about  as  mild  and  sinless  a  game  as  any  in  the  world,  perhaps,  excepting  always 
the  ineffably  insipid  diversion  they  call  croquet,  which  is  a  game  where  you  don't 
pocket  any  balls  and  don't  carom  on  any  thing  of  any  consequence,  and  when  you 
are  done  nobody  has  to  pay,  and  there  are  no  refreshments  to  saw  off,  and,  conse 
quently,  there  isn't  any  satisfaction  whatever  about  it — they  played  dominoes  till 
they  were  rested,  and  then  they  blackguarded  each  other  privately  till  prayer-time. 
"\Vhen  they  were  not  seasick  they  were  uncommonly  prompt  when  the  dinner-gong 
sounded.  Such  was  our  daily  life  on  board  the  ship — solemnity,  decorum,  dinner, 
dominoes,  devotions,  slander.  It  was  not  lively  enough  for  a  pleasure  trip ;  but  if 
we  had  only  had  a  corpse  it  would  have  made  a  noble  funeral  excursion.  It  is  all 
over  now ;  but  when  I  look  back,  the  idea  of  these  venerable  fossils  skipping  forth 
on  a  six  months'  picnic,  seems  exquisitely  refreshing.  The  advertised  title  of  the 
expedition — ''The  Grand  Holy  Land  Pleasure  Excursion" — was  a  misnomer. 
"The  Grand  Holy  Land  Funeral  Procession"  would  have  been  better — much 
better. 

Wherever  we  went,  in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa,  we  made  a  sensation,  and,  I  sup 
pose  I  may  add,  created  a  famine.  None  of  us  had  ever  been  any  where  before  ; 
we  all  hailed  from  the  interior ;  travel  was  a  wild  novelty  to  us,  and  we  conducted 
ourselves  in  accordance  with  the  natural  instincts  that  were  in  us,  and  trammeled 
ourselves  with  no  ceremonies,  no  conventionalities.  We  always  took  care  to  make 
it  understood  that  we  were  Americans — Americans !  When  we  found  that  a  good 
many  foreigners  had  hardly  ever  heard  of  America,  and  that  a  good  many  more 
knew  it  only  as  a  barbarous  province  away  off  somewhere,  that  had  lately  been  at 
war  with  somebody,  we  pitied  the  ignorance  of  the  Old  World,  but  abated  no  jot 
of  our  importance.  Many  arid  many  a  simple  community  in  the  Eastern  hemisphere 
will  remember  for  years  the  incursion  of  the  strange  horde  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
1867,  that  called  themselves  Americans,  and  seemed  to  imagine  in  some  unaccount 
able  way  that  they  had  a  right  to  be  proud  of  it.  We  generally  created  a  famine, 
partly  because  the  coffee  on  the  Quaker  City  was  unendurable,  and  sometimes  the 
more  substantial  fare  was  not  strictly  first  class ;  and  partly  because  one  naturally 
tires  of  sitting  long  at  the  same  board  and  eating  from  the  same  dishes. 

The  people  of  those  foreign  countries  are  very,  very  ignorant.  They  looked  cu 
riously  at  the  costumes  we  had  brought  from  the  wilds  of  America.  They  observed 
that  we  talked  loudly  at  table  sometimes.  They  noticed  that  we  looked  out  for 
expenses,  and  got  what  we  conveniently  could  out  of  a  franc,  and  wondered  where 
in  the  mischief  we  came  from.  In  Paris  they  just  simply  opened  their  eyes  and 
stared  when  we  spoke  to  them  in  French!  We  never  did  succeed  in  making  those 
idiots  understand  their  own  language.  One  of  our  passengers  said  to  a  shopkeeper, 
in  reference  to  a  proposed  return  to  buy  a  pair  of  gloves,  "  Allong  restay  iranketl — 
may  be  ve  coom  Moonday ;"  and  would  you  believe  it,  that  shopkeeper,  a  born 


646  AN     OBITUARY. 

Frenchman,  had  to  ask  what  it  was  that  had  been  said.  Sometimes  it  seems  to  me, 
somehow,  that  there  must  be  a  difference  between  Parisian  French  and  Quaker 
City  French. 

The  people  stared  at  us  every  where,  and  we  stared  at  them.  "We  generally 
made  them  feel  rather  small,  too,  before  we  got  done  with  them,  because  we  bore 
down  on  them  with  America's  greatness  until  we  crushed  them.  And  yet  we  took 
kindly  to  the  manners  and  customs,  and  especially  to  the  fashions  of  the  various 
people  we  visited.  "When  we  left  the  Azores,  we  wore  awful  capotes  and  used 
fine  tooth  combs — successfully.  When  we  came  back  from  Tangier,  in  Africa,  we 
were  topped  with  fezzes  of  the  bloodiest  hue,  hung  with  tassels  like  an  Indian's 
scalp-lock.  In  France  arid  Spain  we  attracted  some  attention  in  these  costumes. 
In  Italy  they  naturally  took  us  for  distempered  Garibaldians,  and  set  a  gunboat  to 
look  for  any  thing  significant  in  our  changes  of  uniform.  We  made  Rome  howl. 
"We  could  have  made  any  place  howl  when  we  had  all  our  clothes  on.  We  got  no 
fresh  raimenf  in  Greece — they  had  but  little  there  of  any  kind.  But  at  Constanti 
nople,  how  we  turned  out!  Turbans,  scimetars,  fezzes,  horse-pistols,  tunics,  sashes, 
baggy  trowsers,  yellow  slippers — Oh,  we  were  gorgeous !  The  illustrious  dogs  of 
Constantinople  barked  their  under  jaws  off,  and  even  then  failed  to  do  us  justice. 
They  are  all  dead  by  this  time.  They  could  not  go  through  such  a  run  of  business 
as  we  gave  them  and  survive. 

And  then  we  went  to  see  the  Emperor  of  Russia.  "We  just  called  on  him  as 
comfortably  as  if  we  had  known  him  a  century  or  so,  and  when  we  had  finished 
our  visit  we  variegated  ourselves  with  selections  from  Russian  costumes  and  sailed 
away  again  more  picturesque  than  ever.  In  Smyrna  we  picked  up  camel's  hair 
shawls  and  other  dressy  things  from  Persia;  but  in  Palestine — ah,  in  Palestine — 
our  splendid  career  ended.  They  didn't  wear  any  clothes  there  to  speak  of.  "We 
were  satisfied,  and  stopped.  We  made  no  experiments.  We  did  not  try  their  cos 
tume.  But  we  astonished  the  natives  of  that  country.  We  astonished  them  with 
such  eccentricities  of  dress  as  we  could  muster.  We  prowled  through  the  Holy 
Land,  from  Cesarea  Philippi  to  Jerusalem  and  the  Dead  Sea,  a  weird  procession  of 
pilgrims,  gotten  up  regardless  of  expense,  solemn,  gorgeous,  green-spectacled, 
drowsing  under  blue  umbrellas,  and  astride  of  a  sorrier  lot  of  horses,  camels  and 
asses  than  those  that  came  out  of  Noah's  ark,  after  eleven  months  of  seasickness 
and  short  rations.  If  ever  those  children  of  Israel  in  Palestine  forget  when  Gid 
eon's  Band  \vent  through  there  from  America,  they  ought  to  be  cursed  once  more 
and  finished.  It  was  the  rarest  spectacle  that  ever  astounded  mortal  eyes,  perhaps. 

Well,  we  were  at  home  in  Palestine.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  that  was  the  grand 
feature  of  the  expedition.  We  had  cared  nothing  much  about  Europe.  We  gal 
loped  through  the  Louvre,  the  Pitti,  the  Unzzi,  the  Vatican — all  the  galleries — and 
through  the  pictured  and  frescoed  churches  of  Venice,  Naples,  and  the  cathedrals 
of  Spain  ;  some  of  us  said  that  certain  of  the  great  works  of  the  old  masters  were 
glorious  creations  of  genius,  (we  found  it  out  in  the  guide-book,  though  we  got  hold 
of  the  wrong  picture  sometimes,)  and  the  others  said  they  were  disgraceful  old 
daubs.  We  examined  modern  and  ancient  statuary  with  a  critical  eye  in  Florence^ 
Rome,  or  any  where  we  found  it,  and  praised  it  if  we  saw  fit,  and  if  we  didn't  we 
said  we  preferred  the  wooden  Indians  in  front  of  the  cigar  stores  of  America.  But 


AN    OBITUARY.  647 

the  Holy  Land  brought  out  all  our  enthusiasm.  We  fell  into  raptures  by  the  bar 
ren  shores  of  Galilee  ;  we  pondered  at  Tabor  and  at  Nazareth;  we  exploded  into 
poetry  over  the  questionable  loveliness  of  Esdraelon;  we  meditated  at  Jezreel  and 
Samaria  over  the  missionary  zeal  of  Jehu;  we  rioted — fairly  rioted  among  the  holy 
places  of  Jerusalem ;  we  bathed  in  Jordan  and  the  Dead  Sea,  reckless  whether  our 
accident-insurance  policies  were  extra-hazardous  or  not,  and  brought  away  so 
many  jugs  of  precious  water  from  both  places  that  all  the  country  from  Jericho  to 
the  mountains  of  Moab  will  suffer  from  drouth  this  year,  I  think.  Yet,  the  pil 
grimage  part  of  the  excursion  was  its  pet  feature — there  is  no  question  about  that. 
After  dismal,  smileless  Palestine,  beautiful  Egypt  had  few  charms  for  us.  "We 
merely  glanced  at  it  and  were  ready  for  home. 

They  wouldn't  let  us  land  at  Malta — quarantine ;  they  would  not  let  us  land  in 
Sardinia  ;  nor  at  Algiers,  Africa;  nor  at  Malaga,  Spain,  nor  Cadiz,  nor  at  the  Ma 
deira  islands.  So  we  got  offended  at  all  foreigners  and  turned  our  backs  upon  them 
and  came  home.  I  suppose  we  only  stopped  at  the  Bermudas  because  they  were 
in  the  programme.  "We  did  not  care  any  thing  about  any  place  at  all.  "We 
wanted  to  go  home.  Homesickness  was  abroad  in  the  ship — it  was  epidemic.  If 
the  authorities  of  New  York  had  known  how  badly  we  had  it,  they  would  have 
quarantined  us  here. 

The  grand  pilgrimage  is  over.  Good-bye  to  it,  and  a  pleasant  memory  to  it,  I 
am  able  to  say  in  all  kindness.  I  bear  no  malice,  no  ill-will  toward  any  individ 
ual  that  was  connected  with  it,  either  as  passenger  or  officer.  Things  I  did  not 
like  at  all  yesterday  I  like  very  well  to-day,  now  that  I  am  at  home,  and  always 
hereafter  I  shall  be  able  to  poke  fun  at  the  whole  gang  if  the  spirit  so  moves  me  to 
do,  without  ever  saying  a  malicious  word.  The  expedition  accomplished  all  that 
its  programme  promised  that  it  should  accomplish,  and  we  ought  all  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  management  of  the  matter,  certainly.  Bye-bye ! 

MARK  TWAIN. 

I  call  that  complimentary.  It  is  complimentary ;  and  yet  I 
never  have  received  a  word  of  thanks  for  it  from  the  Hadjis  ; 
on  the  contrary  I  speak  nothing  but  the  serious  truth  when  I 
say  that  many  of  them  even  took  exceptions  to  the  article.  In 
endeavoring  to  please  them  I  slaved  over  that  sketch  for  two 
hours,  and  had  my  labor  for  my  pains.  I  never  will  do  a  gen 
erous  deed  again. 


CONCLUSION. 


one  year  has  flown  since  this  notable  pilgrimage 
was  ended  ;  and  as  I  sit  here  at  home  in  San  Francisco 
thinking,  I  am  moved  to  confess  that  day  by  day  the  mass  of 
my  memories  of  the  excursion  have  grown  more  and  more 
pleasant  as  the  disagreeable  incidents  of  travel  which  encum 
bered  them  flitted  one  by  one  out  of  my  mind  —  and  now,  if 
the  Quaker  City  were  weighing  her  anchor  to  sail  away  on  the 
very  same  cruise  again,  nothing  could  gratify  me  more  than  to 
be  a  passenger.  With  the  same  captain  and  even  the  same 
pilgrims,  the  same  sinners.  I  was  on  excellent  terms  with 
eight  or  nine  of  the  excursionists  (they  are  my  staunch  friends 
yet,)  and  was  even  on  speaking  terms  with  the  rest  of  the 
sixty-five.  I  have  been  at  sea  quite  enough  to  know  that  that 
was  a  very  good  average.  Because  a  long  sea-voyage  not  only 
brings  out  all  the  mean  traits  one  has,  and  exaggerates  them, 
but  raises  up  others  which  he  never  suspected  he  possessed,  and 
even  creates  new  ones.  A  twelve  months'  voyage  at  sea  would 
make  of  an  ordinary  man  a  very  miracle  of  meanness.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  a  man  has  good  qualities,  the  spirit  seldom  moves 
him  to  exhibit  them  on  shipboard,  at  least  with  any  sort  of  em 
phasis.  Now  I  am  satisfied  that  our  pilgrims  are  pleasant  old 
people  on  shore  ;  I  am  also  satisfied  that  at  sea  on  a  second 
•voyage  they  would  be  pleasanter,  somewhat,  than  they  were  on 
our  grand  excursion,  and  so  I  say  without  hesitation  that  I 
would  be  glad  enough  to  sail  with  them  again.  I  could  at  least 
enjoy  life  with  my  handful  of  old  friends.  They  could  enjoy 
life  with  their  cliques  as  well  —  passengers  invariably  divide  up 
into  cliques,  on  all  ships. 


CONCLUSION.  649 

And  I  will  say,  here,  that  I  would  rather  travel  with  an  ex 
cursion  party  of  Methuselahs  than  have  to  be  changing  ships 
and  comrades  constantly,  as  people  do  who  travel  in  the  ordi 
nary  way.  Those  latter  are  always  grieving  over  some  other 
ship  they  have  known  and  lost,  and  over  other  comrades  whom 
diverging  routes  have  separated  from  them.  They  learn  to 
love  a  ship  just  in  time  to  change  it  for  another,  and  they  be 
come  attached  to  a  pleasant  traveling  companion  only  to  lose 
him.  They  have  that  most  dismal  experience  of  being  jn  a 
strange  vessel,  among  strange  people  who  care  nothing  about 
them,  and  of  undergoing  the  customary  bullying  by  strange 
officers  and  the  insolence  of  strange  servants,  repeated  over 
and  over  again  within  the  compass  of  every  month.  They 
have  also  that  other  misery  of  packing  and  unpacking  trunks 
— of  running  the  distressing  gauntlet  of  custom-houses — of 
the  anxieties  attendant  upon -getting  a  mass  of  baggage  from 
point  to  point  on  land  in  safety.  I  had  rather  sail  with  a 
whole  brigade  of  patriarchs  than  suffer  so.  We  never  packed 
our  trunks  but  twice — when  we  sailed  from  New  York,  and 
when  we  returned  to  it.  Whenever  we  made  a  land  journey, 
we  estimated  how  many  days  we  should  be  gone  and  what 
amount  of  clothing  we  should  need,  figured  it  down  to  a  math 
ematical  nicety,  packed  a  valise  or  two  accordingly,  and  left 
the  trunks  on  board.  We  chose  our  comrades  from  among  our 
old,  tried  friends,  and  started.  We  were  never  dependent 
upon  strangers  for  companionship.  We  often  had  occasion  to 
pity  Americans  whom  we  found  traveling  drearily  among 
strangers  with  no  friends  to  exchange  pains  and  pleasures 
with.  Whenever  we  were  coming  back  from  a  land  journey, 
our  eyes  sought  one  thing  in  the  distance  first — the  ship — and 
when  we  saw  it  riding  at  anchor  with  the  flag  apeak,  we  felt 
as  a  returning  wanderer  feels  when  he  sees  his  home.  When 
we  stepped  on  board,  our  cares  vanished,  our  troubles  were  at 
an  end — for  the  ship  was  home  to  us.  We  always  had  the  same 
familiar  old  state-room  to  go  to,  and  feel  safe  and  at  peace  and 
comfortable  again. 

I  have  no  fault  to  find  with  the  manner  in  which  our  excur- 


650  CONCLUSION. 

sion  was  conducted.  Its  programme  was  faithfully  carried  out 
— a  thing  which  surprised  me,  for  great  enterprises  usually 
promise  vastly  more  than  they  perform.  It  would  be  well  if 
such  an  excursion  could  be  gotten  up  every  year  and  the  sys 
tem  regularly  inaugurated.  Travel  is  fatal  to  prejudice,  bigot 
ry  and  narrow-mindedness,  and  many  of  our  people  need  it 
sorely  on  these  accounts.  Broad,  wholesome,  charitable  views 
of  men  and  things  can  not  be  acquired  by  vegetating  in  one 
little  corner  of  the  earth  all  one's  lifetime. 

The  Excursion  is  ended,  and  has  passed  to  its  place  among 
the  things  that  were.  But  its  varied  scenes  and  its  manifold 
incidents  will  linger  pleasantly  in  our  memories  for  many  a 
year  to  come.  Always  on  the  wing,  as  we  were,  and  merely 
pausing  a  moment  to  catch  fitful  glimpses  of  the  wonders  of 
half  a  world,  we  could  not  hope  to  receive  or  retain  vivid  im 
pressions  of  all  it  was  our  fortune  to  see.  Yet  our  holy  day 
flight  has  not  been  in  vain — for  above  the  confusion  of  vague 
recollections,  certain  of  its  best  prized  pictures  lift  themselves 
and  will  still  continue  perfect  in  tint  and  outline  after  their 
surroundings  shall  have  faded  away. 

We  shall  remember  something  of  pleasant  France ;  and 
something  also  of  Paris,  though  it  flashed  upon  us  a  splendid 
meteor,  and  was  gone  again,  we  hardly  knew  how  or  where. 
We  shall  remember,  always,  how  we  saw  majestic  Gibraltar 
glorified  with  the  rich  coloring  of  a  Spanish  sunset  and  swim 
ming  in  a  sea  of  rainbows.  In  fancy  we  shall  see  Milan  again, 
and  her  stately  Cathedral  with  its  marble  wilderness  of  grace 
ful  spires.  And  Padua — Yerona — Como,  jeweled  with  stars ; 
and  patrician  Yenice,  afloat  on  her  stagnant  flood — silent,  des 
olate,  haughty — scornful  of  her  humbled  state — wrapping  her 
self  in  memories  of  her  lost  fleets,  of  battle  and  triumph,  and 
all  the  pageantry  of  a  glory  that  is  departed. 

We  can  not  forget  Florence — Naples — nor  the  foretaste  of 
heaven  that  is  in  the  delicious  atmosphere  of  Greece — and 
surely  not  Athens  and  the  broken  temples  of  the  Acropolis. 
Surely  not  venerable  Rome — nor  the  green  plain  that  com 
passes  her  round  about,  contrasting  its  brightness  with  her 


CONCLUSION.  651 

gray  decay — nor  the  ruined  arches  that  stand  apart  in  the 
plain  and  clothe"  their  looped  and  windowed  raggedness  with 
vines.  We  shall  remember  St.  Peter's :  not  as  one  sees  it 
when  he  walks  the  streets  of  Rome  and  fancies  all  her  domes 
are  just  alike,  but  as  he  sees  it  leagues  away,  when  every 
meaner  edifice  has  faded  out  of  sight  and  that  one  dome  looms 
superbly  up  in  the  flush  of  sunset,  full  of  dignity  and  grace, 
strongly  outlined  as  a  mountain. 

We  shall  remember  Constantinople  and  the  Bosporus — the 
colossal  magnificence  of  Baalbec — the  Pyramids  of  Egypt — 
the  prodigious  form,  the  benignant  countenance  of  the  Sphynx 
— Oriental  Smyrna — sacred  Jerusalem — Damascus,  the  "  Pearl 
of  the  East,"  the  pride  of  Syria,  the  fabled  Garden  of  Eden, 
the  home  of  princes  and  genii  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  the  old 
est  metropolis  on  earth,  the  one  city  in  all  the  world  that  has 
kept  its  name  and  held  its  place  and  looked  serenely  on  while 
the  Kingdoms  and  Empires  of  four  thousand  years  have  risen 
to  life,  enjoyed  their  little  season  of  pride  and  pomp,  and  then 
vanished  and  been  forgotten  ! 


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OP 

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has,  in  connection  with  its  register,  an  arrangement  in  album  form  by  which  Family  Portraits  may 
be  preserved  within  its  sacred  lids ;  making  in  reality  what  it  purports  to  be,  a  Family  Bible.  It  is 
adapted  to  Family  wants— every  family  should  have  it— it  fills  a  void  long  felt  in  family  circles,  and 
we  anticipate  for  it  a  large  and  rapid  sale. 

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PERSONAL  HISTORY  OF 


ft 

ILLUSTRATED  WITH 

Twenty-five  New  and  Elegant  Pull  Page  Engravings, 

In  Steel  and  Wood,  among  which  are  two  of  General  Grant,  by  the  best  Artists  in  the  conn- 
try.    Also,  Fac-simileB  of  Hare  Documents,  Public  and  Private,  the  famous  I'nconditional-Sur- 
render,  and  other  equally  interesting  and  important  Letters,  from  Originals  intrusted  to  the  au 
thor  by  General  Grant  and  his  friends. 
THE  >IO«T  P»OI?TJI^j\.Ti  BOOK  OF  THE 


This  volume  contains  many  Documents  and  Letters  of  the  Highest  Importance,  relating  to 
Civil  and  Military  Matters,  SINCE  THE  WAK,  which  have  never  before  been  made  public. 

By  ALBERT  D.  RICHARDSON, 

AUTHOB  OP  "FIELD,  DUNGEON,  AND  ESCAPE,"  AND  "BEYOND  THE  MISSISSIPPI." 

AUTHENTIC,  AUTHORIZED  AND  APPROVED, 

Written  with  the  knowledge,  consent,  and  full  concurrence  of  the  illustrious  General. 
In  view  of  the  prominent  position  now  occupied  by  General  Grant,  it  must  be  conceded  by  all 
that  a  full  and  truthful  history  of  him,  should  lind  its  way  into  the  hands  of  every  reader. 

No  American  citizen  should  live  under  any  President  with  whose  character  and  antecedents, 
both  public  and  private,  he  is  not  perfectly  familiar. 

This  work  differs  very  essentially  from  the  many  "  LIVES  OF  GRANT,''  now  before  the  public, 
and  should  by  no  means  be  classified  with  them.  While  recording  his  illustrious  achievements 
both  in  the  Field  and  in  the  Cabinet,  it  is  yetpM-soual,  ratlier  than,  martial,  or  political, 
free  from  military  technicalities  or  partisan  coloring,  d  'picting  not  merely  the  exploits  of  Grant, 
the  soldier,  but  the  entire  life  of  Grant  the  man,  his  daily  habits  and  conversation,  his  thoughts, 
and  his  motives,  as  evinced  by  his  acts  and  his  words,  under  all  of  the  many  different  circum 
stances  of  his  eventful  career,  giving,  in  fact,  a  full  and  clear  exhibit  of  the  inner,  as  well  as  the 
outer  man.  It  has  not  been  prepared  for  a  campaign  document,  but  for  the  library,  and  it  hae 
been  admitted  by  all  to  be  a  great  acquisition  to  the  biographical  literature  of  the  country,  it 
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cription  price  is, 

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THE  GREAT  METROPOLIS 


By    JUNIUS    HHINRI    BROWNE. 

The  author  of  this  work  needs  no  endorsement.  His  well  known  signature,  as  a  leading  and 
popular  correspondent  of  the  press,  is  welcomed  at  thousands  of  firesides  in  the  land.  His  hab 
its  of  close  observation,  his  long  experience  as  a  journalist,  and  his  acknowledged  talents  as  a 
writer  have  all  been  drawn  upon  and  concentrated  for  months  upon  this  work. 

Reflecting  every  phase  of  Metropolitan  life  and  society,  giving  life-like  pictures  of  the  inter 
esting  localities  aiid  peculiar  institutions  of  New  York,  the  manners  and  customs  of  every  class 
of  its  people;  their  modes  and  habits  of  life;  how  and  where  they  live;  the  great  contest  for 
wealth  existing  among  them,  and  how  it  is  gained  and  how  lost;  revealing  scenus  of  wickedness 
and  of  misery  ;  exposing  the  tricks  of  the  dishonest,  and  the  traps  laid  for  the  unwary  ;  in  fact, 
showing  up  the  whole  inner  life  of  the  great  heart  of  our  country,  in  a  manner  and  with  a  full 
ness  never  equalled.  This  volume  is  respectfully  offered  by  the  publishers,  with  implicit  faith 
in  its  great  value  as  a  book  of  profit  and  amusement. 

This  work  is  embellished  by 

*         Over  Twenty  Appropriate  and  Spirited  Engravings. 

and  is  a  most  beautiful  and  attractive  octavo  volume  of  700  pages, 

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THE    GREAT    REBELLION. 

A  HISTORY. OF  THE 


Embracing  an  authentic  account  of  the  whole  contest, 

BY  HON.  J.  T.  HEADLEY, 

Author   of  "Napoleon  and  his  Marshals,1'  "Washington  and  his  Generals,"  '•  Sacred 

Mountains,"  &c. 

ENGKLISH    AND    GKERMAN. 


THIS  GREAT  WORK  commences  with  the  first  outbreak  of  the  war,  and  gives  a  full 
and  truthful  account  of  the  terrible  struggle  to  its  very  end,  and  closing  with  the  Re 
ports  of  Generals  Grant  and  Sherman. 

Noting  each  important  and  interesting  event,  with  time  and  place  of  its  occurrence, 
with  perfect  accuracy,  stating  only  as  facts  those  things  which  are  well  authenticated, 
this  work  cannot  fail,  ere  long,  to  be  accepted  by  all  as  a  STANDARD  AUTHORITY,  and 
as  such  will  prove  of  immense  value  toils  possessors  as  a  BOOK  FOR  REFERENCE,  and 
no  library  will  be  considered  complete  without  a  copy  of  it  upon  its  shelves. 

This  work  is  printed  from  a  beautiful,  clear,  new  type,  on  good  paper,  and  is  illus 
trated  with  over  seventy  first-class  Steel  Engravings,  consisting  of  Military  and  Naval 
Scenes,  and  Portraits  of  Officers  prominent  in  the  war. 

It  will  be  beautifully  and  substantially  bound  in  One  Superb  Volume  of  nearly 
Twelve  Hundred  Pages. 

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THE    SECRET    SERVICE, 

The  Field,  The  Dungeon  and   The  Escape. 

By  ALBERT  D.  RICHARDSON,  (Tribune  Correspondent.) 

The  above  work  embraces  the  entire  narrative  of 
Mr.  RICHARDSON'S  Unparalled  Experience  for  Four  Years. 

I.  Traveling  through  the  South  in  the  secret  service  of  the  Tribune  at  the  outbreak  of  the  War. 

II.  With  our  armies  an<l  fleets  both  East  and  West,  during  the  first  two  years'of  the  Rebellion. 

III.  his  thrilling  capture  while  running  the  batteries  on  the  Mississippi  River  at  Vicksburg,where 
more  than  half  his  companions  were  either  killed  or  wounded. 

IV.  His  confinement  lor  twenty  months  in  seven  different  Rebel  Prisons. 

V.  His  escape  and  almost  Miraculous  Journey  by  night,  of  nearly  400  miles,  aided  by  Negroes  and 
Union  Mountaineers  of  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee  through  the  enemy's  country  to  our  lines. 

it  abounds   in  stirring  events  never  before  given  to  the  public,  and  contains  minute  details  of 

the  escape,  which  have  not  yet  appeared,  including  a  description  <-f  DAN  ELLIS,  the  famous  Union 

Pilot,  and  the  "UNKNOWN  GDIDE,"  in  the  person  of  a  Young  Lady,  who  piloted  Mr. 

Richardson  and  his  comrades  by  night  out  of  a  Rebel  ambush. 

In  view  of  the  author's  rich  material,  his  well  known  trustworthiness,  and  graphic  descriptive 


powers,  the  publishers  feel  justified  in  predicting  a  work  of  unusual  interest,  containing  more  of 
the  FACT,  INCIDENT  A^D  ROMANCE  OF  THE  WAR,  than  any  other  which  has  yet  appeared. 
The  work    is  offered    in  the  best  style  of  typography,  on  good  paper,  andcontaini  over  500  Octavo 


Pages  and,  Nineteen  Engravings. 

Price,  Cloth,  (neat  and  substantial,)       .-,....      $3.00 
Library  Style,  (Leather)  Sprinkled  Edges,       -  3.50 

The  book  is    published  in  the  German  language,  same  styles  of  binding,  and  same  prices. 

Agents  Wanted.    Apply  to  AMEEIOAN  PUBLISHING  CO,, 

Eartford,  Conn. 


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